from that site:
"Kevin Rietmann: “The reg. holes on the Fitzpatrick pipes that Standeven gave to his student had sliding holes…”
What the hey? Sliding holes? Doesn’t that violate the First Law of Thermodynamics or something?
I wouldn’t put it past the Taylors though…
T
John Beatty, “The Dean of Chicago Pipers” according to O’Neill, had the set made around the 1880s. He paid $500 for it - various estimates have been given for how much that would be in today’s money - a workman a hundred years ago made about a dollar a day, so this amounts to over a year’s wages - thus something like $15,000? Notice in O’Neill’s Irish Musicians and Minstrels there’s a picture of another piper, Nicholas Burke, with a similiar quad-bore/double bass Taylor set - with an ivory chanter. I like the idea that perhaps the Taylors went to specialists for these quad bores - or made special equipment for it - taking potshots through ebony with spoon augers sounds awful chancy/expensive.
In the 30’s Joe Shannon’s cousin Eddie Mullaney was playing on the radio, and a lady called up saying she had what she thought was a set of Irish pipes in her attic. Eddie snapped up the set and there you go. He made a few 78s in duet with fiddler Patrick Stack (who is credited with various tunes in O’Neill’s books), a couple of these have been reissued on the Shanachie/Yazoo Wheels of the World CDs.
Eddie gave the set to Joe in the late 60’s.
In the picture of the Chicago piper’s club (with has Beatty in its ranks) there’s another piper, John Conner, with those third-octave keys at the top of the chanter. They are set in metal tabs like the regulators, each key has two sections, pushing on the main key presses the other key open - the other key doubles back, and covers the hole itself. Thus the press of the key is roughly over the hole itself.
Conner considered himself the best of the Chicago pipers for playing airs - thus his interest in third octave notes.
More questions…
The Fitzpatrick set bass and double bass regulators are made out of sheet metal. Thus the “slidability.” I forget if Quinn illustrated this in any of his articles. I think he did. The lower section of the key with the pad would slide around too, to match the hole…why not just push the reg pin up and down? Eat your heart out, Andreas! No set screws for these crazies.
The Joe Shannon interview mentioned above is very good and well worth listening. It’s reassuring to hear how proficient a piper Shannon was, even in his mid-70s.
Shannon said that Beatty was an army officer and probably independently wealthy. The set he commissioned from Taylor Bros was the “Delux Model”. Someone (was it one of the Taylors) said that Beatty could make plenty of noise on his pipes but wasn’t a very good piper. 
From the article that Kevin refers to:
The Scott set is fitted with a double-bass regulator of a truly remarkable design. In terms of its overall length and bore, it is approximately the same as was achieved with the more conventional two-part double-bass with wooden pipes, but the Scott pipe is constructed entirely with telescoping metal tubing. There is nothing new under the sun. Inside the tubing of the first stretch of the regulator, at least, the bore is executed in a wooden pipe. As the Scott double-bass regulator is folded twice, the final stretch, in which the tone holes are located, is oriented in the logical way with the lowest note farthest away from the stock and the highest note closest to it. Time has not been kind to the fit of the metal tubes but it is clear that the makers intended some degree of relative sliding motion, presumably for tuning, since the keys are also fitted with extendable slides. This would allow the player to adjust the acoustical location of either or both of the lowest two notes, while maintaining the positions of the key touches relative to the keys of the other regulators.
That’s just waaaaaaay too cool!
It doesn’t hurt to remember that the Taylor brothers were working c. 1870-1890, without the benefit of electric tools, and probably without any other source of power besides muscle.
The stuff they came up with was not to everyone’s taste, and there are plenty of people who think it was downright ugly, but the Taylor brothers were wonderful innovators and craftsmen of a very high level. There is so much yet to learn from those who have gone before.
Stuff like this really puts me in mind of the Taylors being organ builders, too. Read up on organ tech. An organ’s flue pipe is like a huge Clarke’s tin whistle. Imagine a Clarke’s whistle 8 feet long - after building one of those a bass regulator’s not so daunting! And an organ pipe only plays one note - you need one for each key on the keyboard, to build one rank of pipes - organs have multiple ranks. Reed pipes are like box-shaped drone reeds - now build 44 of those puppies. And tune it all. Balance the voicing (“regulation”). And get it playing well. Plus bellows, tracker systems, all these mechanical linkages…
I was just talking with Liz Carroll the other night about Joe. She’s not sure who got his set although she believes it is probably still in the family. She says Joe used to constantly warn other pipers who wanted to handle his set of what a monster it was and how much effort it took to play. I’ve played Mark Hillman’s Taylor set and it wore me out and it’s only a “simple” (for the Taylor brothers) three-quarter set! (and loud as hell, too, by the way). It’s amazing to me what an astounding player he was on that set, even in his later years. Liz also reminded me that Joe was a firefighter in Chicago for years, so perhaps all of that running around, lifting heavy onjects, climbing tall buildings and rescuing people kept the piping biceps in shape, huh? I cannot wait to hear that Ceili House interview. Thanks for posting it, Pat!
(Oh, and according to Liz, you can see a picture of Eddie Mulaney (who had the set before Joe) in a picture from the cover of the old version of O’Neill’s Music of Ireland (the one that actually has ALL the tunes in it). He’s in a photo with a number of other pipers, but the set is not hard to miss). Cheers.
Zac
There is a 1901 photo in Irish Minstrels & Musicians of the Chicago Music Club. John Beatty is there with his set; Barney Delaney next to Beatty with the set that I play; next to Delaney, the John Conners set that ended up in Pittsburgh.
Eddie Mullaney is mentioned in Waif and Strays of Gaelic Melody, 1922 by Francis O’Neill. I have been able to turn up a few photos of Eddie. He was born in Chicago, taken to Ireland by his folks as a baby where he was raised, then returned to Chicago for the rest of his life.
Jim,
Any idea what happened to the Beatty set? Is there a younger Shannon running around playing it?
Zac
I have nothing to add to Liz on the pipes. I am always willing to run off cassettes of Joe (1978 at a Comhaltas reception, 1979 at home, Irish Pipefest 1981, 1983 on stage with LOF), so let me know if that would help.