Johnny Gorman

Uilleann Pipes
1

I was surprised to see a photo of this famous Roscommon blind piper in a documentary on North Connacht:

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/97508705@N06/9762330633/]

They show the photo at 11:08 in the documentary. Before I’d only seen a pencil sketch of him, it looks much like the man in this picture. I checked and it doesn’t look like NPU have included this in their journal. They pan up the photo so I couldn’t show all of the set here, interestingly enough it is a Taylor. Gorman died in 1917 so he was one of the early adopters of concert pitch in Ireland. He was a wandering piper so it’s perhaps surprising he could afford such an instrument.

Some factoids about Johnny I’ve picked up over the years: He played a lot with famous Sligo fiddlers Michael Coleman and James Morrison, and this piping influence can be heard in their music, Coleman especially played a lot of tight triplets; in the Sligo Maid you even hear him play ABA in the second octave, an ornament Patsy Touhey and his colleagues used off and on, ACA on the pipes of course and the reed would immediately drop an octave, but the pipers just carried on with the tune. One fellow talked about going into a room, Coleman was playing, and “You’d take your oath there was a piper in the room!”

Dublin piper Billy Andrews recorded a reel in the late 20s, “Johnny Gorman,” this was a version of Sporting Nell but with a 2nd part more suited to the chanter. Sporting Nell is also called Gorman’s.

In an interview in the Comhaltas archives with Andy Conroy talks about Gorman a bit; he also plays the Butcher’s March, telling at the first how he met up with a piper in America who knew Gorman and could do a fair imitation of this tune as played by Johnny; this is pretty much as how Patsy Touhey recorded it on a cylinder, too, backstitching the back D in the first bar, and F#/G in the 4th, then substituting an ACA triplet for the usual plain A note in the 2nd part. Touhey also had a variant where instead of eAA fAA gAA fAA he would trill the notes in the 2nd octave.

Gorman could make reeds, despite being totally blind. He used a bit of broken glass for a scraper. He learned from a gentleman piper, Vizzard; a rumor was that he was a bastard child of the gentry. He lost his pipes at some point and was reduced to playing the fife and fiddle; he died by falling into a ditch, the body was only found afterwards, with its head separated from the body.

2

Thanks for this Kevin. Really great information.

Gorman is buried in Drumshanbo, Co. Leitrim. There is a grave marker on the wall of the cemetery as I remember. I visited the site several times when I was living in the area 10-12 years ago.

One of the side events during the annual Joe Mooney Summer School in Drumshanbo is a tour of the area focussing on local musical history and influential players. I think the Gorman grave is included in that tour each year.

Rick

3

Decapitated in ditch? Sounds a bit Miss Marple.

How is that even possible by accident?

4

Animals yanked the head off the corpse. Rather gruesome way to go.

The oh-so-clever censorship software on this site rendered my term for “illegitimate child” to “basmati child,” if you’re wondering what on Earth I was talking about there. Basmati, that stuff takes a while to soften up, eh?

5

bastard child

edited to add…hahaha…it did it for me too :laughing:

6

That would explain the Saffron stains on his lapels! :smiley:

7

Nasty.

I had just assumed basmati child was some sort of coloquial name for one born in the ‘colonies’.

What sort of wild aninmals? Understand if ditch was in Russia; bears, wolves and the like. Ireland? Stotes?

8

Ok, so when someone here calls me a ducking basmati i know who to un-friend :smiley:

9

An old piper I met in Tubbercurry, Tom Dowd, told me that he’d heard it said that Johnny Gorman was said to have been a better piper than Johnny Doran. Tom remembered Johnny Doran pitching his tent (the children slept in the wagon) near Tubbercurry church. Johnny would cycle to the football match to busk. Johnny Gorman’s body was found in the spring. He’d died of hypothermia during the winter months and dog’s had found his body

10

[John Cleese voice]

… the ferocious “bull” Limpet!

11

Sorry to rain on the parade, but the piper in the photograph is not the Roscommon Johnny Gorman, but a namesake: John Gorman from Gormanstown, Co. Meath. The picture, taken in Chicago, was on the front of An Píobaire in the 1990s, and a search on the NPU website will bring it up, though ‘Gormanstown’ is spelt ‘Gormonstown’.

Seán Donnelly

12

Ah, thanks Seán. Never would have suspected. Gorman was on the cover of Volume 3, Issue 6, from March 1991, for the curious - I lucked out doing a bit of searching for the issue in question. Helps to use Google to search source.pipers.ie, the built in search engine is a bit funky.

No more details are given in the AP other than what Seán provides - although the caption says “obviously taken in a studio in Chicago”, what makes this obvious? Does it state as much on the back, or was Gorman in Chicago at the time? Far as I remember O’Neill didn’t mention him in his writings, either, which is more than a little bit surprising if that’s the case.

13

Kevin:

The photograph is online at the NPU Archive, and the studio name is on it: http://pipers.ie/archive/archpics/NPUAY2525.jpg
I have a vague memory of hearing that Gorman sent the photograph to relatives in Ireland, and that one of their descendants presented it to NPU; again, if I remember rightly, it is an original photograph, not a copy; all this, though, is over twenty years ago, and I could be wrong.

As to the claim that Johnny Gorman was better than Johnny Doran, well, there never was a famous musician yet in Ireland who didn’t have a brother of whom nobody had ever heard who was twice as good.

Gorman was married to a widow whose first husband had been killed in a foundry accident in England, and she used to say that she was a most unfortunate woman, her first husband burned to death and her second husband froze to death.

Seán

14

Thanks, Seán. That poor widow!

15

“As to the claim that Johnny Gorman was better than Johnny Doran, well, there never was a famous musician yet in Ireland who didn’t have a brother of whom nobody had ever heard who was twice as good.” Sean.

Don’t get your reasoning here Sean. No unheard of brothers in this case. Tom Dowd’s piper had heard both Gorman and Doran play (not at the same time of course). He thought Gorman was “a better piper” than Doran. Gorman died in 1917, prehaps Tom Dowd’s man heard Johnny Doran when Doran was still a very young man still learning his trade, who knows, no big deal. Tom Dowd was in his 80’s when I met him in Tubber in 1998 or 1999. He had a set of Crowley pipes but couldn’t manage to play them any longer.

16

Dúirt piobaire liom go ndúirt piobaire leis.

17

I never believe a piper. They’re all nuts.

18

Liam Walsh wasn’t impressed with Doran either, according to Tommy Kearney. Likely these fellows were just being snobbish about “open” piping.

19

Do you think that is something that still persists today?

20

Sure. Happens all the time, part of human nature. B/C vs C#/D. 19 frets vs 17. HO vs N scale. We’re hardwired to care deeply about stupid things that really don’t have any bearing on anything.

Also, tight piping is more difficult, hence better.