Daniel J. Murphy uilleann

Lives of the Pipers Home

Daniel J. Murphy

bank employee, piper; commercial recordings exist

b. County Kerry Feb. 22, 1880
d. Boston, Massachusetts, June 3, 1961


Tunes of Old Ireland Get a Hearing
[photo with caption] "By a Staff Photographer
Daniel J. Murphy, Left, and Patrick Brown, Right, Testing Gaelic Pipes"
Boston MA Christian Science Monitor Aug. 31, 1938 p. 11 column 2
From paper copy at Mary Baker Eddy Library, Boston.
From The Christian Science Monitor. © 1938 Christian Science Monitor. All rights reserved. Used under license. Expires Feb. 2030. https://www.csmonitor.com


In 1916 the Boston Museum of Fine Arts was given an important collection of musical instruments. Among them is a lovely and complicated set of Irish pipes by Michael Egan, made probably in Liverpool in the mid-nineteenth century. In the 1930s Nicholas Bessaraboff described and categorized the instruments in the collection and published the results in a groundbreaking book, Ancient European Musical Instruments (1941). Bessaraboff, an engineer by training, was clearly fascinated with the Egan set and described it in detail, with photographs and a measured drawing. Bessaraboff knew that Irish pipes were still being played, and he was clever enough to seek out local players to advise him on the way the instrument functioned. This was in 1938 or shortly before. Through a local music store he "discovered" two friends, pipemaker Patrick Brown and long-time player Daniel J. Murphy.

Murphy was an experienced piper, most active publicly in the 1920s. He had played for exhibition dancers, on phonograph recordings, on the radio. By 1938 his public appearances were probably winding down; a 1954 article about him says he gave up playing in public "about ten years ago." There is little press coverage or information about him during his most musically active years. But there are three articles mentioning him in later years; perhaps they came about because of his encounter with Bessaraboff and later mention in Bessaraboff's book.

Murphy was born and raised in County Kerry. His parents were Daniel and Katherine Eager Murphy. Daniel Jr. emigrated to Boston in 1901 and became a US citizen as soon as he could, 1906. He married Bridget O'Shea in 1908; he was 28 and she was 23 years old. Their marriage endured and they had at least seven children. In 1918, at age 38, he was obliged to fill out a military draft registration card. There he was described as "Height Medium Build Medium Color of Eyes Blue Color of Hair Auburn"

Not long after coming to Boston Murphy began studying pipes with piper and bandleader Mike Hobbs. He was good enough to appear in public as a piper by 1907; Murphy was mentioned as playing for exhibition dancers at a church May Party in Belmont, MA, along with his teacher Hobbs and piper William Bowen.

About this time, around 1910, Murphy met Patrick Brown, a bricklayer and later an electrician, who made Irish pipes. Their friendship lasted for decades, and accounts from the 1930s, 40s and 50s often mention both of them. From an article, August 1938, "For three decades the two have pursued their hobbies of making and playing bagpipes, together. They once had about 10 friends [playing various instruments] who used to join them, in Mr. Brown's kitchen, of an evening. Now [in 1938] there are four or five."

I have found no record of public performances by Murphy during the 1910s or 1930s. There are a few references to Murphy playing for Irish-American sponsored events in the 1920s. A newspaper ad from October 1922 has him as the manager of "Irish Set Dancing ... every Saturday Evening [at] Wells Memorial Hall." He was on the radio at least once, with the "Four Leaf Shamrock Band" on station WNAC, Nov. 18, 1927. "This group consists of Thomas Ryan, violin; Daniel Murphy, Irish pipes; John Delaney, banjo; and Jimmie Black at the piano."

For an apparently short time, in 1926, Murphy was a member of "Dan Sullivan's Shamrock Band." This was a successful and long-lived dance band. They recorded many 78 records, and Murphy played on the first ones, recorded in New York Feb. 1926. Band personnel changed a lot over the years, but the initial lineup was Dan Sullivan, Jr., leader and piano; Thomas Ryan, fiddle; Michael Hanafin, fiddle; Daniel J. Murphy, pipes; Daniel P. Moroney, whistle. Most of these recordings survive and many can be heard via the Internet. Murphy did not take part in the second group recording session, April 1927, so presumably he was out of the band by then.

It is often hard to make out Murphy's piping on the recordings. Perhaps the most one can say is that his rhythm is good and his playing enthusiastic. In other contexts, playing in the kitchen or playing solo, for examples, he might have played in a different manner. From the August 1938 article:

An article from 1954 says that "Preferring soft music, Mr. Murphy rarely used the regulators." The same article describes him as a good reedmaker. Nothing more is heard of Murphy after the 1954 article.

Murphy owned a set by the Taylor brothers, highly regarded makers who worked in Philadelphia circa 1874-91, and claimed it was the last set the brothers made. The same claim was made for a set vaudevillian Hugh McDougal was trying to sell in 1923, most likely a different set. Murphy's set is now owned by a piper in Illinois.

Murphy worked for the United States Trust Company, a commercial bank, from about 1903 to 1944. For most of his time there he worked as a "utility man." In earlier years he worked as, or the same job was described as, porter, messenger, clerk, special agent, supply man. It is likely a utility man can be assigned, as needed, to all these jobs and more.

There were times when he had the role of security guard. In Sept. 1939 he was passenger in a car carrying money from bank branches to the main office. Four armed men took over the car when it was stopped behind a truck. The driver was forced at pistol-point to drive to an "isolated section" of Boston. There the men took cloth bags of money and transferred them to their own car and fled. The bank car driver was George R. Young, Jr. and his passenger was Daniel J. Murphy, the "bank collector," who had a pistol with him. At the start of the robbery one of the robbers pointed a pistol at Murphy's head and Murphy handed over his gun. Murphy gave police a "minutely detailed account of the robbery." I have been unable to determine if the robbers were ever identified.

Murphy and his family lived for many years in Dorchester, a neighborhood to the south of Boston city center. He owned a house at 47 Mount Bowdoin Terrace. Daniel J. Murphy died of pneumonia and infection after about six weeks in the hospital, June 3, 1961. He was survived by his wife and seven children and buried in St. Joseph Cemetery, West Roxbury, MA.


Thank you to Dan Neely for bringing Murphy's newspaper death notice to my attention.


Selected References

Bessaraboff, Nicholas Ancient European Musical Instruments An Organological Study of the Musical Instruments in the Leslie Lindsey Mason Collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Harvard University Press 1941 [the Egan set pp. 88-93; Daniel J. Murphy mentioned, footnotes 179-81, p. 394]

Boyden, David D. "Nicholas Bessaraboff's Ancient European Musical Instruments" [the impact of Bessaraboff's work] Notes [published by the Music Library Association] Second Series, Vol. 28, No. 1 (Sep., 1971), pp. 21-27

Bright, Virginia "Mystery of Bagpipes" [stopped playing about ten years ago; rarely used regulators; made reeds] Boston [MA] Sunday Globe Jan. 3, 1954 p. A-25 column 4
ProQuest Historical Newspapers

"Dance to Pipers. St Joseph's of Belmont Has Annual May Party" Boston [MA] Globe May 24, 1907 p. 3 column 4
ProQuest Historical Newspapers

"Four Robbers Get $22,000 in Roxbury Bank Car Holdup" Boston [MA] Globe Sep. 8, 1939 pp. 1, 22
ProQuest Historical Newspapers

Hill, M. J. "unusual member of the double reed family" [owns the last set the Taylors made] Crescendo (South Lancaster, Mass.) vol. 1 no. 2 Nov.-Dec. 1951 pp. 12-14
From New York Public Library Performing Arts Library

"Irish Set Dancing" [advertisement of weekly dances, Murphy as manager, with photo of Murphy] Boston [MA] Globe Oct. 30, 1922 p. 3 column 8
Newspapers.com

Irish Traditional Music Archive "Dan Sullivan's Shamrock Band 78s, 1920s-1930s" [information about the band]
https://www.itma.ie/features/playlists/dan-sullivans-shamrock-band

Museum of Fine Arts Boston Collections [photo and description of the Egan set] accessed Feb. 2020
https://collections.mfa.org/objects/50470

O'Neill, Francis letter to Henry Mercer May 7, 1923 [Hugh McDougal selling the last set the Taylors made] From the Collection of the Mercer Museum Library of the Bucks County Historical Society, Doylestown, PA.

Spottswood, Richard K. Ethnic Music on Records: a discography of ethnic recordings produced in the United States, 1892 to 1942 University of Illinois Press 1990 Vol. 5 pp. 2860-61

Strachan, Pearl "Tunes of Old Ireland Get a Hearing" [Patrick Brown and Murphy; discovery by Bessaraboff; studied with Mike Hobbs] Boston MA Christian Science Monitor Aug. 31, 1938 p. 11 column 2
From microfilm

"What's On the Air?" [Four Leaf Shamrock Band] Boston [MA] Globe Nov. 18, 1927 p. 28 column 5
ProQuest Historical Newspapers

Nick Whitmer
February 2020 addition May 2021