New wax cylinders discovered - Chief O'Neill recordings

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

There's a very interesting piece in the new Review of the American Piper's Club, or as we like to call it round here, the Wally Weekly News. The editor thanks Kevin Carr for the information but doesn't specify if Kevin wrote it. I'll describe it here for the sake of non-members of the Club.
It concerns the discovery of 32 (I think) wax cylinders discovered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, by the grandchildren (I think it would more likely be great-grandchildren) of Michael Dunn, who is featured in Chief O'Neill's Irish Musicians and Minstrels. I'd heard rumours about old sets of pipes in his posession turning up as well.
The article states that 3 of the cylinders have been "digitized," Edward Cronin playing Banish Misfortune, John McFadden playing the Swallow's Tail, and Patsy Touhey playing Scotch Mary. The player of each recording is announced before the tune, as was the case on other recordings of Chicago based musicians.
The article seems quite sunny about the quality of the discovery and being able to have this music before the public, mentioning an archive of Irish music at the Smithsonian or Libary of Congress at one point. One inaccuracy in the article is the statement that Patsy Touhey only recorded 9 tunes commercially - this refers to the disc recordings released by the Victor company. If you add up all the cylinder recordings Touhey made for his own customers the total is around 70. It would seem the writer wasn't aware of the Small/Mitchell NPU book.
The author also states that the main thing holding up "digitizing" the entire collection is the cost of doing so - $450 per cylinder, thus they need a donation of ca. $13,000. This seems ludicrously expensive, even with the need to clean each cylinder. Anybody know more about the expenses involved with this sort of thing? A lot of people muck about with cylinders for a hobby, there's a Phonograph Ring of websites for instance.

[eric]

*Great* news indeed, as I understood the cylinders owned by Michael Dunn were thought destroyed (Nicolas Carolan's "A Harvest Saved").

After hearing the praise for Edward Cronin's style by O'Neill, I have always wished I knew what he sounded like. Here's to hoping these cylinders eventually make it to light of day.

Thanks, Kevin, for highlighting this for those that don't receive the Review.

[Patrick D'Arcy]

Surely Jim knows something about this.

Mr. McGuire?

PD.

[djm]

I remember seeing a news article on tv about the digitization process developed for the Smithsonian. It involves cleaning and then mapping the surface with lasers so that there is no further wear on the source. With discs, the needle bangs back and forth along bumps on the sides of the groove. With cylinders, the needle actually tracks vertically in the groove, so that wear becomes more intense with continuous use.

Once the scanning is done, the output is remapped to follow the groove end to end. Lots of scratches can be cancelled out in software, just like normal digital home recording we do today on our PCs, but because they have a complete surface map, they can often calculate missing bits on smaller scratches and reconstitute parts of the recording. After that, its just regular filtering for hiss and rumble.

The Smithsonian has enormous libraries of recordings, not only of music, but of every sound/noise you can imagine and then some. Many of the older recording materials are deteriorating rapidly, thus the impetous to develop this digitization process. I can only hope they will realize how much more important Irish piping cylinders are and put this collection at the front of the queue.

djm

[Jim McGuire]

The Library of Congress is deciding on whether to do the whole lot or not. The first three recordings are marvelous; Edward Cronin is not a disappointment on cylinder.

The Touhey 'Scotch Mary' is actually Touhey, Early and McFadden and, while it has its own charm, it runs smack into the limitations of a single microphone.

I spoke to Mary Dunn (Michael's daughter; she was born in 1903) about the recordings back in May, 1977. It was totally exciting fo me to hear that they had surfaced last year.

I hope to be writing up a bit for NPU this month. While the first three are absolutely exciting, the rest of the lot is fantastic.

While Touhey may have advertised cylinders for sale, I have not heard of a customer's copy being extant; he may not have sold even one tune. The Busby/Carney collection is Touhey's cylinder machine and cylinders.

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

While Touhey may have advertised cylinders for sale, I have not heard of a customer's copy being extant; he may not have sold even one tune. The Busby/Carney collection is Touhey's cylinder machine and cylinders.

O'Neill, in correspondence to Seamus O'Casadie of Dublin, discusses cylinders he sent to Dr. Henebry of Waterford, I think the gist is that he paid for them out of his pocket and didn't get a word of thanks. Some of the cylinders are announced as being for "Dr. Henebry." Some are announced for John Henebry, the Doctor's brother. O'Neill also mentions that it will be unlikely to make more of these - 1914, I think - thus Touhey was giving up on his home-brew recording? The Edison company tried to hire him for recordings done in 1899, but couldn't meet his price. I'd be very surprised if all the Touhey recordings were done for interested parties, etc. I think it was 15¢ a record? Not a bad price even at the turn of the century, maybe $5 in modern terms? Touhey was immensly popular.
How do you get ahold of these recordings, Jim?

[patsky]

Hello,
Years back while working on my Masters in Folklore I worked for a couple of well known archives to earn extra money.
Let me say that, comming from first hand experiance, I have a pretty low opinion of archives in general because once committed to an archive recordings and music have a way of disappearing from the public. The stupid copyright laws and the ethics of archiving create a situation where the archive is loathe to make copies of any of their holdings.
The Library of Congress is the worst. Even when they agree to make a copy of a recording the fee , last time I checked, is $20.00 for one tune/recording. Only wealthy students could do research under these conditions. It got to the point when I would look up a recording at the LOC and if I wanted it, I went to Joe Buzzard ( a very great private collector) and he would make me copies for $.50 each.
To be more exact, I have a good field collection of tapes that I recorded in Ireland over the years and I would put them in a pile and burn them before I would give them to the LOC or any other so called public archive, unless they gave me a contract in writing saying that the public had access and they would make very inexpensive copies..which of course, they will not do. Storage would be a better name for archives.
I hope that the cylinders are not turned over to the Smithsonian or the LOC-- If so then we may never hear from them again.

All the best,
Pat Sky

[djm]

That sounds like a real bummer, Pat. I have had similar experiences dealing with libraries. They glom onto materials and can't abide anyone ever wanting to even dare to take a peak at what's hidden on the shelves. In trying to get some recorded material from a university in NC, I was offered some very poor cassette dubs for a few hundred bucks, or, if I wanted to fund the entire process, they would be happy to put the whole collection on CD. Clearly this collection of ITM recordings is not a poor man's game.

djm

[Cayden]

In trying to get some recorded material from a university in NC, I was offered some very poor cassette dubs for a few hundred bucks, or, if I wanted to fund the entire process, they would be happy to put the whole collection on CD. Clearly this collection of ITM recordings is not a poor man's game.

djm

The cassettes were good valaue a few years ago, if I remember well they were doing it at cost (a fiver a tape or something like that) whcih was very reasonable. Not all of the original recordings in that collection were of good quality (the Willie Clancy whislte tracks were poor to say the least, at least in places). I got illegal copies of those tapes but several people who dealt with that particular institution (Caoimhin O Ragallaigh got copies after I told him about them) were quite pleased with how things were handled. Are you sure you're not being overly fussy DJM?

PS If you want a real challenge try getting recodings out of the library of UCL (LImerick), say the Paddy Fahey collection. It can be done though if you push the right buttons with the librarians.

[djm]

It is a great deal of work for me in a non-professional setting to try to digitize stuff like these tapes. I just don't have the time and tools to do a proper job of it. The material itself, of course, is wonderful. That is not the issue. I am more concerned that, as Pat noted, there is tons of material squirrelled away that we may never get access to. Death to hoarders, I say.

djm

[Jim McGuire]

While Touhey advertised custom cylinders for sale, none have ever surfaced (if there are any). All of the ones that have turned up were done as gifts or 'gratis'. As such, we are quite lucky to have so many of those.

Fr Fielding gave lectures in Ireland in 1902 and played cylinders as part of the lecture (Touhey, etc). Fielding visited home (Mooncoin) and lectured in Waterford and Dublin. He left those cylinders with Henebry. Also, O'Neill sent on another batch to Henebry with the resultant O'Neill correspondence about the unacknowledged parcel.

I'm optimistic that these recordings will be shared with the world but the exact path has not been cleared yet.

[Kevin L. Rietmann]

In their favor the Lib. of Cong. also has some great stuff online - field recordings, the Dayton Miller flute collection, and the like.
Many of the Touhey recordings don't specify a customer in the announcement - Fasten the Leg In Her/Jenny Dang the Weaver, say - are they labeled on the cylinder itself? Or is their provenance known? Is it supposed to be the stuff that was left up in the attic, that was mentioned in the Tommy Kearney interview in Ceol na Eireann?

[Jim McGuire]

Archives have their mission. There is a tremendous amount of stuff in private hands, too. Archives are facing tremendous changes to their existence with the advent of scanners, web sites, etc. The Library of Congress is putting a lot of stuff on their web site. We all get to see that Egan set at the Boston MFA via their web site.

This new batch of cylinders were recorded on O'Neill's cylinder machine. When O'Neill's sixth child died (his fifth son; four daughters survived), he stored the machine at Sgt Early's. When Early died in 1914, the machine went to Michael Dunn in Milwaukee.

[MarkS]

... Anybody know more about the expenses involved with this sort of thing? A lot of people muck about with cylinders for a hobby, there's a Phonograph Ring of websites for instance.

Check out http://www.tinfoil.com. This site offers digitizing and archiving of wax cylinder recordings at no charge, other than shipping. Related links:

How to have your collection archived: http://tinfoil.com/collectr.htm

Wax cylinder preservation tour: http://tinfoil.com/xferpics.htm

[Jumper]

Check out http://www.tinfoil.com.

Interesting site, Mark. Thanks for the pointer.

There's an archived recording there of James C. McAuliffe playing "Mrs. McLoud's Reel," along with a photo, obit, and other biographical information:

http://www.tinfoil.com/cm-0008.htm#e07230



I love the tie.

Jonathan