Joe Shannon passed away on Sunday night, just one week from his 89th birthday. Visitation is Wednesday, 2-9pm, at Gibbons Funeral Home in Chicago on Irving Park Road. Funeral is Thursday at St Juliana’s at 10am; burial at All Saints, Des Plaines.
http://www.legacy.com/chicagotribune/LegacySubPage2.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonId=2971815
May he be too busy playing his pipes in the everlasting tionol in the great beyond to actually get any rest.
This is very sad news, what a great life he has lived though. May he rest in peace.
Patrick.
Sad news indeed. He was your teacher, Jim? To you and to all who knew and loved him, I’m very sorry for your loss.
Rick
Joe started me out on a bag and chanter in 1976. I was lucky to spend a lot of time with him and enjoyed every minute.
Very sad news…was away for the week and only just heard the news from this site now. Thank you for telling us, Jim, thank you very much, it was a kindness you didn’t have to do for us.
I only had one telephone conversation with him, it was very inspiring…but his health was not very good and I hated to bother him. He told me that he had to struggle for a long time before he finally came into his own as a piper, that it takes “years and years to make a piper”. I can hear him say that to me now as I type this. I admire the hell out of his determination, his grit, and his pride in his music. I only hope his old friend Johnny McGreevy was keeping a seat for him in that great pub in the sky.
JOSEPH G. SHANNON, 88
Musician a master of Irish pipes
By Hal Dardick Tribune staff reporter
Published December 29, 2004Joseph G. Shannon left Ireland when he was 13, but the Emerald Isle’s
music never left him.After he settled in Chicago’s immigrant community in the early 1930s,
his folk music talents continued to grow–so much so that years later
Irish musicians visiting the U.S. visited Mr. Shannon’s Northwest Side
home to hear him play the uilleann pipes, a form of bagpipe.“Any visiting musician and piper tries to stop by and see Joe,” said Jim
McGuire, a former music student of Mr. Shannon’s who became a close
friend.Mr. Shannon, 88, a retired Chicago firefighter who won U.S. and Irish
honors for playing the pipes, died Sunday, Dec. 26, of skin cancer at
his daughter’s home in Batavia.Born in a small rural village in County Mayo, Ireland, Mr. Shannon was
one of six brothers who shared a passion for music. “It really was the
brothers who were the musicians, and the village, Treenabontry, was
filled with music,” said his son, Jim Shannon.In Chicago, Mr. Shannon learned to play the bagpipe. While still a
teenager, he was persuaded to take up the uilleann pipes, an Irish
version of the bagpipe on which the piper uses his elbow to work the
bellows and sits, rather than stands, while playing.Playing old recordings of legendary Irish musicians, he mastered the
complex instrument. “My father, to his last day, could not read a note
of music,” his son said. “He taught himself to play by ear.”As a teenager in 1934, Mr. Shannon was the piper at the Irish Village at
the World’s Fair in Chicago.In the early 1940s, he met Mary Cunningham at a dance on the West Side.
The couple married and had 13 children, raising them on the West and
Northwest Sides.After working in the stockyards and in freight tunnels, Mr. Shannon
landed a job in 1951 with the Chicago Fire Department. He worked for the
department for 11 years as an ambulance driver until his retirement in
While with the department in the 1960s, a piper gave Mr. Shannon a set
of highly valued 75-year-old uilleann pipes that re-energized Mr.
Shannon’s dedication to playing. In 1968, he played in England and
Ireland to great acclaim.In 1983 he received the National Heritage Fellowship Award for master
folk and traditional artists from the National Endowment for the Arts,
and in 1989 he received Illinois’ Heritage Award.Mr. Shannon played at numerous festivals. He always played with fiddler
Johnny McGreevy, a lifelong friend, until McGreevy’s death in 1990. In
the late 1970s, the Irish folk duo were recorded on “The Noonday Feast”
album.Mr. Shannon also played with the Chieftains, a Grammy-winning Irish folk
music group, on many occasions in Chicago and Milwaukee from the late
1970s through early 1990s.On Jan. 1, Na Piobairi Uilleann, or the Uilleann Pipers club, of Dublin,
made Mr. Shannon a patron, akin to a lifetime-achievement award. Irish
folk musicians from all over the world visited Mr. Shannon in Chicago.“They would make it a point to look up Joe Shannon, and they didn’t even
know him,” his son said. “And he just opened up the house, serving them
music, tea, sandwiches and conversation.” “He used to play in his
kitchen, which had the best sound of all time,” said Liz Carroll, an
acclaimed Irish folk fiddler raised on Chicago’s South Side. “I loved
playing with him in his kitchen.”Mr. Shannon played in public as recently as 2001, when he played with
Carroll at Chicago’s Celtic Fest. About 18 months ago, he broke a hip
and moved in with his daughter in Batavia.With his children, Mr. Shannon was very strict. “He was an authoritarian
kind of guy,” his son said. “When it came to the family, he was
unwavering.” But he also “reveled [in] the successes his children had,”
his son said. “When he really shone was when he was with his immediate
and extended family.”In addition to his son Jim, Mr. Shannon is survived by daughters Mary
Rasori, Noreen Ryder, Kathleen Krywar, Ellen Ford, Barbara Dolan, Nancy
Bouloukos and Patty Finegan; sons Terry, Michael and Brian; 21
grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
Copyright © 2004, Chicago Tribune
Nice write up. Jim, who was the maker of the 19th century set? Was it a Taylor?
Neil
Joe played the Beatty set by Taylor.