In the 1950’s Leo Rowsome formed an Uilleann pipe quartet with Willie Clancy,Sean Seery ans Leon Rowsome. Does anyone know if the group made any recording or do you know what were they doing musically?
With the talent that was in the group it would be nice to think they were doing other stuff than just all playing the same tune note for note at the same time.
Anyone like to offer suggestions what could be possible with four well tuned sets of pipes playing together.
RORY
There were several different lineups of players in the Rowsome quartet over a period of decades, starting in the 1920s. There’s a bit more on Kevin Rowsome’s site about this.
Dave Page was a member of one of the early groupings, and shared his recollections of that time with John Tuohy in the 1970s, when Dave was living here in San Diego. Here’s a bit from an article John published in The Pipers’ Review in 1983, Vol. 3 #3:
During this period Dave played for a short time in one of Rowsome’s piping quartets. At the time the members of the quartet were Leo, Dave, Tom Rowsome, and Eddie Potts (Sean Potts’ son). The band played a wide selection of music consisting of marches, airs, set dances, jig, reels and hornpipes. Leo provided much of the fancy regulator work and chanter harmonies while the other three players played the melody. At one point during each show Leo would leave the stage to prepare for his solo. While the three remaining players played a selection, Leo changed the reeds in his pipes replacing the stiffer, less damageable reeds that he used for group playing with thinner, more sensitive reeds that he preferred for his solo playing.
I believe in the liner notes of Kevin Rowsome’s CD “The Rowsome Tradition” he describes the quartet in its various incarnations as playing for the public as well as for radio broadcasts. Unfortunately I don’t think those radio broadcasts were recorded, or if they were they haven’t surfaced as of yet (aside from the archival recordings on the aforementioned CD). Hope that helps. I know I sure would love to hear some of that music as Leo was fond of harmonizing with the melody.
There are two duets (Leo and Leon) and a trio (Leo, Leon, and Liam) on Kevin’s album - listed as “archive recordings”. Not quite the full quartet but it gives a bit of the flavor of things.
I seem to recall hearing a recording of the quartet once, but I may be mistaken.
Who would put in a present day Uilleann pipe supergroup quartet?
How about Paddy Moloney because of his work with the Chieftains he would make a good arranger of the music .
Liam O’Flynn for his super chanter work.
Ronan Browne for the regulator work
And Paddy Keenan to add a bit of wildness.
The only other question would be ,what pitch should they play in?
RORY
B
David
Yes, take a look from 6min 20sec on this video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jwz5IG_71cc
Paddy Moloney plays a nice duet with Kevin Rowsome. I’ve never heard any Rowsome Quartet recordings so I don’t know, but I’d imagine this is the kind of stuff they would’ve done…
Leo made 78s labeled “Leo Rowsome and His Irish Pipers Band” but these are the ones where he’s accompanied by violin (not fiddle, violinist comps chords mostly) and drum. One disc was reissued on the Topic LPs, more of them I uploaded to the Internet Archive, such as this one: Bonnie Kate, Miss Monaghan, Blackberry Blossom.
Hmm, what happened to the Sticky topic for all those 78s that used to be here? 
The Flute and Fiddle ones are still up. That was a lot of work uploading and documenting that stuff.
When I first saw these 78s in Wally Charm’s basement I was excited about finding recordings of the Quartet, but alas. They are nice discs at any rate. I do have some recordings of Leo’s class playing en masse; for all his skill with pipes and reeds the high Es in these tunes are reminiscent of what in pipe organ terminology is called the Wolf tone. 
There’s also some bits of Leo and son Leon playing duets (aside from what’s on Kevin’s CD), and recordings of a quartet in London - Felix Doran, Pat McNulty, Leo (or Leon), someone else - nice lineup. Also the septet on Eoin O Riabhaigh’s album. 
I just took a look in my collection as that sounded familiar, but Kevin’s right, “Leo Rowsome and His Irish Pipers Band” is not a pipe band.
Kevin, I really appreciated all the work that went in to uploading the 78’s. Let’s revive that thread as it was an extremely valuable resource.
Here’s a great one on the site of Eddie Mullaney playing his Taylor set in 1926.
http://www.archive.org/details/EddieMullaneyandPatrickStackHarvestHome
I pulled down a fair few Rowsome recordings from Ceolnet before RTÉ pulled this site down. There was some great flute playing on several of the band tracks as well as fiddle. Although I got the tune names per track, RTÉ had taken the site down before I got the track info. Did anyone here manage to get it?
djm
Here’s a link to the full article from John Touhy: http://www.uilleannobsession.com/article_dave_page.html
PD.
I pulled down a fair few Rowsome recordings from Ceolnet before RTÉ pulled this site down. There was some great flute playing on several of the band tracks as well as fiddle. Although I got the tune names per track, RTÉ had taken the site down before I got the track info. Did anyone here manage to get it?
That was Vincent Broderick on the flute, Larry Redican on fiddle.
Thanks Pat!
Thx, Kevin. For completeness, who was on drums?
Thx,
djm