Chiff and Fipple Forums

Brian Howard told me personally that he made Finbars set.

The album I have is "Finbar & Eddie Furey", The Collection, Finbar on
Pipes & whistle and Eddie on the Guitar, the 23 tracks are mainly
traditional tunes e.g Rankish Paddy,Pigeon on the Gate,The fox chase
the full Pipe version Solo, My mothers friend has three or four of his
albums from the seventies & eighties, it has a compact Disc number on
the back of the cover, here it is, Disc number CCSCD 165, Castle
communications PLC,Unit 7, 271Merton Road,London SW18 5js, Don't
know if this music Company is still going but you could give it a try,
this is the album he plays Pipes in C on, all the best.

Dinney Delaney was a piper from Ballinsloe, Co. Galway, who recorded a set of four tunes on wax cylinder at the Dublin Oireachtas, in 1899, I think, which were circulated on tapes NPU would pass around at tionols in the 1970s; one of these tunes was a single jig, announced as "Number four: The Old Hag in the Kiln." Pronounced "Kill un," too. Seane Keane recorded on his Gusty's Frolicks album, I think that was the earliest it made it on to wax, and it was called simply "Dinney Delaney's" there, setting a trend. Kevin Burke called it such on his Cap Fits record, for instance. Delaney's Bb M. Egan pipes wound up in Perth, Australia, where they were copied by Geoff Wooff; and now I play a copy of those, too. Here is something Caoimhín Mac Aoidh wrote that wound up in an article at irishfiddle.com:
"Paddy Fahey often told me that during the end of the last century and the first decade or two of this century the local fiddlers of east Galway were always very anxious to play with the famed uileann piper Dinny Delaney. Dinney's chanter was pitched in B flat. Rather than tune the fiddles down to the chanter, the players regularly re-learned the tunes in flat keys to play with him without tuning down. As such, the local players became highly conversant in playing flat keys. When they started to compose themselves or re-arrange tunes in more common keys, they would often opt for playing them in flat keys as after only a few years, the "wistful flat key sound" was very much the aim of players. "

The picture of Fin on the cover of Traditional Irish Pipe Music was used on the back of the American Nonesuch releases, but with the frame compressed so you couldn't see the baby, which is good, it's altogether disturbing looking, Fin looks like he's smacking his lips...
I heard a story once about Felix Doran visiting the Fureys in the late 60s, he wanted to hear this hot young piper. He was pretty impressed, when another young lad walked in and played a set himself, and Felix about crapped his pants it was so amazing. The new piper? Paddy Keenan.

Kevin, I think I almost did the same thing when I heard Patrick Murray play, at the San Francisco Tionol!

And just the way P. Murray treats "The Old Bush" on the soundbite on his website, shows he knows.

That second photo of Finbar - holy smokes - he looks like the guy that used to play for '3 Dog Night' !

[quote="Kevin L. Rietmann"]
The picture of Fin on the cover of Traditional Irish Pipe Music was used on the back of the American Nonesuch releases, but with the frame compressed so you couldn't see the baby, which is good, it's altogether disturbing looking, Fin looks like he's smacking his lips...



Is it a real baby? Hard to tell...

Finbar plays a Johnny Bourke concert set.It was made by Johnny about 15 years ago . The set is very similar to Davy Spillanes and Ronan Brown,s.Hope that clears the question for you.
Stephen

Is it my turntable (remember those?) or are whichever pipes he plays on "The Irish Pipes of Finbar Fury" really sharp...like pitched in Eflat maybe?
That would suggest Rowsome. Wasn't he a pupil of Leo's? I'm sure Leo would have set him up with a set of his own make.
t

Finbar learned from Johnny Keenan, father of Paddy.

Baen wrote:Just curious if anyone knows what pipes Finbar Furey plays, more in terms of his early recordings (such as "Irish Pipe Music", and "The Irish Pipes of Finbar Furey").


thanks,
Baen

They're called uilleann pipes, or sometimes "union" pipes. They come from Ireland.

Royce

So I was visiting Ireland during August and September, 1975, and I had attended a Sunday afternoon session at Slattery's in Dublin. afterwards I got out my NU smallpipe and played a request, and Ted Furey took an interest in the music and by extention, myself. When I complained that a heat wave in Glasgow had "done in" my chanter reed, and that the set I had was a 1959 Kennedy set, He volunteered his son, Finbar as the supplier of a new reed. After a whirlwind chase to Bally Fermot, with the Fureys in a souped up Ford Cortina and me, limping along in a 850cc Mini.
Finbar dug out some spare reeds and made a show of fitting a small Vee shaped reed head on a long, big bore staple with a collar "floating" half way up the Vee. This was the 1st time I ever saw a Furey/ Keenan or a Keenan/Furey reed. Paddy Keenan told me years after, that he and Finbar started making this style reed while experimenting with different shapes, sometime in the early 1960s. Well the reed fitting didn't work as Finbar's Kennedy set had lots of metal rushes up the bore and my Kennedy didn't,
being fitted with a Kennedy Reed with a rectangular (oblong) reed head on a narrow bore(5/32) staple, 2and 1/8"s long. the overall length being 3and
an 1/8". Well, he showed me polishing the cane on the chanter itself, and he would clip the reed several times to bring up the back D, to no avail, using a straight fingernail sissors. We then went to Tom Moore's house in Bally Fermot and Finbar told me that this gentleman had a big influence on him.
Tom played my NU halflong pipe and was obviously a good highland as well as playing the Irish pipes. Finbar then showed me a set of Taylor stlye
pipes that a Policeman had given him in New York, for merely playing an Irish
tune on his Kennedy set. The police man had told Finbar that ithe set had belonged to Patsy Touhey, and I noticed that the Regulator mounts were of
Blackwood, and that didn't jibe with the photos in O'neill's works, but it had the ribbon keys and Finbar played the chanter for me. which had a sweet mellow tone. Years later, I mentioned all this to Gene Frain in Watertown Ma., and he told me that Touhey had more than one set of pipes. So like fragments of the true cross or all those Strad-i-various violin out in the world you just have to take it at face value, doubting all the while.
Yours in PIPING Sean Folsom

Brian Howard made the set which Finbar plays on the album with Dave Stewart. The chanter is a Rowsome but the rest is Brians--listen to those regulators!

Thanks for the info and the story Sean, very cool.

tommykleen wrote:Is it my turntable (remember those?) or are whichever pipes he plays on "The Irish Pipes of Finbar Fury" really sharp...like pitched in Eflat maybe?
That would suggest Rowsome. Wasn't he a pupil of Leo's? I'm sure Leo would have set him up with a set of his own make.
t

It was quite common in the analog days for sound engineers to "tweak" recordings by speeding them up, so the pipes might be sharp, or just "brightened" in the final mix. (I have the same album on vinyl myself, the first piping recording I ever purchased).

-Larry