Patsy Touhey

His innovative technique and phrasing, his travels back and forth across America to play on the variety and vaudeville stage, and his recordings made his style influential among Irish-American pipers.

According to Captain Francis O'Neill in his seminal work "Irish Minstrels and Musicians" Touhey was the third generation of accomplished pipers stemming from his grandfather, Michael Twohill (the original spelling, b. ca.

In his late teens he strayed into a Bowery music hall where John Eagan, the "White Piper" of Galway, was engaged.

Touhey and Eagan toured the northeastern United States with "Harrigan's Double Hibernian Co., Irish and American Tourists" in 1885 and 1886.

The shows included slapstick, low-brow gags, Irish nostalgia, and a piping finale to which Mary Touhey danced.

A stranger to jealousy, his comments are never sarcastic or unkind, neither does he display any tendency to monopolize attention in company when other musicians are present.” Touhey lived on Bristow Street in the Bronx, New York City, from at least 1900 until 1908.

In these ways his style contrasts with the prominent influences on current piping who stayed in Ireland—Willie Clancy, Johnny Doran, Seamus Ennis, John Potts, and Leo Rowsome.

"He takes the audience by storm," wrote Captain Francis O'Neill, "even when composed of mixed nationalities.” His music can be heard on three 78rpm sides recorded by Victor in 1919: two medleys of reels and one of jigs.

An earlier negotiation with Edison had fallen through over money, but as early as 1901 Touhey advertised a list of 150 tunes and recorded the cylinders one by one at home, filling orders at $10 per dozen.

It was one of O'Neill's cylinders that prompted the Gaelic scholar Father Richard Henebry to declare, "[Touhey's performance] has the life of a reel and the terrible pathos of a caoine.

Tom Busby was a student of Carney's and described the style of these pipers in various articles and letters printed in An Píobaire, the newsletter of Na Píobairí Uilleann.