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South Boston's Patsy Touhey (1865-1923) was a master of the Irish uilleann pipes and a public figure who represented Irish-American music in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He became known as King of the Pipers because of his expertise and brilliance on the pipes.
Born in Loughrea, County Galway, on February 6, 1865 to parents James and Mary O'Tuathail, the family emigrated to Boston in 1868, when Patsy was just three years old. They settled in South Boston, which had become an increasingly Irish neighborhood with the opening of St. Augustine's Chapel and Cemetery in 1819 and as a result of the Irish famine of the 1840s.
Touhey came from a long line of pipers. His father James and his grandfather Michael were both considered fine pipers. When James died just seven years after arriving in Boston at age 35, Patsy began taking lessons from Bartley Murphy, a Mayo-born piper who taught Patsy the rudiments of piping, which was and still is considered a complex art that takes many years to master. Murphy had studied under Patsy's father, and was regarded as an influential piper and teacher.
A left handed piper, Patsy became renowned in Irish circles for his incredible dexterity and imaginative playing.
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From Francis O'Neill's book, Irish Minstrels and Musicians
"In the manipulation of the regulators he was possessed of unrivaled and phenomenal skill," wrote the Irish World.
Touhey's big break came in 1893, when he represented Ireland at the World's Columbia Exposition in Chicago. Chicago musicologist and author Francis O'Neill described Touhey as embodying "the hopes and aspirations of a regenerated nation." His superb mastery of Irish music was noted by all, leading to further engagements, including a stint at the national exposition in St. Louis in 1903.
O'Neill, a famous collector of Irish tunes, referred to Touhey as a "genial, obliging, and unaffected wizard on the Irish pipes," and profiled Touhey in his book, Irish Minstrels and Musicians.
Throughout his career, Touhey befriended many of the Boston Irish musicians, including Michael and William Hanafin, Dan Sullivan, Owen Frain and Sean Nolan, and he was present for the premier concert of the Boston Irish Pipers Club in 1911 at Welles Memorial Hall. He also supported the Gaelic League, founded by Douglas Hyde in 1893 to resurrect Irish language and culture, and played at many of their events.
Touhey was one of the first Irish musicians to record his music. In 1903 he ran a series of ads in the Irish World newspaper in New York which read:
Patrick Touhey
The Celebrated Irish Piper
is now Making
PHONOGRAPHIC RECORDS
Records sent C.O.D. $10.00 per dozen.
Cylinder records only.
Send for catalog of Irish Records,
Irish Bag Pipes, Music furnished for concerts to
Patrick Touhey
1388 Bristow Street, New York City, NY
The following year Touhey formed a vaudeville act with Charles Henry Burke, and later they added Touhey's wife, dancer Mary Gillen, to the show. They performed in New York and across the country for almost 20 years, borrowing the Hibernicon format of witty sketches, physical comedy and Irish music and dancing perfected by the Cohan in the 1870s and 1880s, with whom Touhey toured for a time.
Advertisement in Bennington Banner, VT, May 10, 1912
Touhey died on January 10, 1923 and is buried at St. Raymond's Cemetery in the Bronx, New York. His obituary in the Irish World praises his music, but more so the man himself. "An extraordinarily gifted musician, Patrick Touhey was not given to boastfulness or self-exploitation, but on the contrary, was genial and generous, the soul of kindliness and modesty."
Patsy Touhey is listed on Boston's Irish Heritage Trail as someone who deserves a memorial or plaque in his honor, for his great contributions to Irish music and culture, and for representing South Boston in a positive and uplifting manner.
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