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Shannon travelled to Ireland at least four times, three of them to appear at the Willie Clancy Summer School, from 1986 to 1993.

I have sort of half a notion Shannon was over in 1985 but I would have to check the tapes from that year. I had a few chats with him and McGreevy over the years. McGreevy was a gentleman. At the time a friend was feeding me a lot of 78 rpms and I lapped up the tunes on them, both McGreevy and Shannon expressed their amazement I could abandon the Seamus Ennis tunes and whatever was going at the time and go for the Tom Ennis stuff (which I don't think was all that amazing to do but there was no internet at the time and the records were not as readily available to many), Shannon said Tom Ennis was the piper he played with most, he'd put on the records in his kitchen and play along. I must say I found the sound of his pipes terribly harsh at the time. I remember his pipes being examined, over the years he had used different colours of thread for the bindings and when his regs were pulled out there was a virtual rainbow of colour on the tenons.

Not surprising you found Joe´s set harsh sounding, Mr. G. ¨Loud as hell!¨ has been another description. Striking in the drones along with a full chord on the regs was described as ¨Kick-starting a Jumbo Jet¨.

Bob

One more biography has been added to the Website:

Patrick "Patsy" Touhey (1865-1923) Most successful of the vaudeville pipers; remembered for his recordings.

This is the last of the performer/player biographies. Next comes pipemakers in North America before 1950, probably in a different format.

Lives of the Pipers

Nick Whitmer

That's really well done Nick--great research and very evocative of his career.

It's interesting how Touhey was professionally Irish but vaudeville was its own world and its own nationality. His close freinds were German comics. Lots of accounts of Vaudeville mention the "cosmoplitanism" of the backstage. Lots of performers would go out and do some sort of ethnic act, of performing an immigrant ethnicity other their own, and then back stage they observed a very mixed world.

nwhitmer wrote: This is the last of the performer/player biographies. Next comes pipemakers in North America before 1950, probably in a different format.

Lives of the Pipers

Nick Whitmer

What a fantastic resource. So well researched and presented. Thanks for all your hard work on this, Nick. Looking forward to reading and referencing it many times in the future. Looking forward to the next installment on pipe makers too. Cheers!

Oh boy. Can't wait for the pipemakers research. Thanks so much Nick!