Charles Mack
performer, actor, singer
b. Chicago, Illinois Feb. 22, 1868
d. Lake Worth, Florida March 7, 1961
Ad for performance at Cook Opera House, Rochester, NY Oct. 16-21, 1903
Rochester [NY] Democrat and Chronicle Feb. 15, 1903 p. 16 column 1
Newspapers.com
Charles Mack and Company promotional photo, circa 1913. For the playlet "Come Back to Erin."
L to R, Charles Mack, probably John Conway, Etta Bastedo, Mrs. Charles Peters.
From John Gerard McLaughlin, Images of America Irish Chicago Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, SC 2003 p. 66
Since the late 1990s millions of pages of old newspapers, from communities large and small, have been scanned and digitized. The content of these pages has been indexed and made available over the Internet, thanks to advances in computer processing and information technology. Now published information is available which would have been difficult if not impossible to find. And, if newspaper digitation projects are sustained, there is much more to be made accessible. A 2015 report by the Center for Research Libraries estimated "that the U.S. has not yet reached 10% of total coverage of pre-1923 newspapers held by libraries."
Much of the information I have compiled about Irish pipers has come from digitized newspapers. For vaudeville piper Charles Mack there are hundreds if not thousands of references to his engagements. For at least 35 years he was active in vaudeville and stage shows. He was away from home, on the road, 30 or 40 weeks every year. This kind of life is not for everyone, but it suited him. He married, raised a family, retired when vaudeville was no longer viable, lived a long life.
Charles Mack was his professional or stage name. He began to use it about 1895, after perhaps five years in the business. For those first years he was known as Charles McNurney.
He was born Michael Charles McNurney in Chicago, probably in 1868. His father, also Michael Charles McNurney, was born in Cork in 1830 and emigrated to the United States in 1848. He did well in Chicago as an expert horseshoer, and in the 1870s and 1880s was elected Alderman in Chicago city government. Michael senior played Irish pipes, and was among Francis O'Neill's musical friends in Chicago. O'Neill described him as "wealthy" and a good piper.
I have found no mention of Charles Mack as a musician or actor until after his father's death in 1888. In 1889-93 he was playing the pipes for dancers in plays starring Dan McCarthy. McCarthy was playwright, singer and dancer in a run of successful Irish-themed plays, "True Irish Hearts," "Our Dear Irish Boy," "The Rambler from Clare," etc. All his plays included an Irish piper, and several well-regarded players worked for McCarthy, including Pat Touhey and Eddie Joyce. That McCarthy hired Mack - then going by McNurney - speaks well of his abilities as a piper.
By 1895 he seems to have made the transition to vaudeville, sometimes performing by himself but more often teamed with others. Here begins his use of the name Charles Mack. He is billed variously as Irish piper, dancer, comedian.
He was vaudeville partner with Sam Morton, circa 1895-97, the team of Morton and Mack. They are described as "Irish pipers and dancers." Little is known about what their act was like. It may have been a skit or "playlet," perhaps 15 or 20 minutes long. One reviewer expressed surprise that "it was in Morton to make such a fine Irish character," implying acting or comedic talent and the dialogue to display it. Morton later had a long and successful vaudeville career performing with his wife and two children as The Four Mortons. There is some evidence that Mack and Morton tried their act again in the waning days of vaudeville, 1929, but with little apparent success.
Mack visited Ireland in 1897. Music historian Martin Dowling wrote in 2014, "A Belfast Gaelic Leaguer [John St. Clair Boyd] reported in 1897 hearing in the Grand Opera House, Belfast, 'a young American, Charles Mack, playing the Irish pipes in a style superior to anything I had ever previously heard'." Boyd was struck by Mack's elaborate set of pipes, made by the Taylor brothers of Philadelphia. In 1909 Mack mentioned in an interview that "several years ago" he went to Ireland and played before the Pipers' Club of Cork at their invitation.
As "Touhey and Mack," Charles Mack partnered with Pat Touhey 1898-1900. Touhey later emerged as the most successful of the vaudeville pipers and was one of the best, if not the best, pipers of his era. For two seasons Touhey and Mack toured with Rice and Barton's Big Gaiety Spectacular Extravaganza Company, a burlesque show. Both played, and their act featured "conflict with the Irish pipes." They also came onstage in an [probably prop] automobile.
In 1900 Mack began performing with Jim Callahan, an Irish dancer and flute player. Their act, Callahan and Mack, was a success and they remained partners for about six years, touring nationally and playing in big-time theaters. They developed and refined a skit called "The Old Neighborhood" which was a hit. Here is a review of a show in Rochester, NY, Sept. 1903:
- They present a truly artistic sketch, in which there is much genuine humor, with a tinge of pathos. An old Irishman is made the butt or subject for a younger countryman's playful bantering and tormenting. One of the duo is playing some national airs on Irish pipes, effecting the dual purpose of gaining rounds of applause and of gradually winning the old man back to good humor and forgiveness. Both execute Irish dances, and in the space of a quarter of an hour succeed in proving one of the smartest and most entertaining "turns" yet given on the variety stage.
Mack played the younger of the two characters.
It is hard to say how original "The Old Neighborhood" was. Vaudeville acts were notorious for pirating the work of others. It can be said that other Irish acts from this era performed the same kind of skit; younger man teasing an older man. For example, piper Edward O'Donnell played a similar young man role in the O'Donnell Brothers act. Common to most if not all is stage business where the reluctant old man, arthritic or enfeebled, hears the music and is energized and compelled to dance.
A Keith Theater manager's report for a Callahan and Mack engagement in New York City, March 1903, says the sketch was 21 minutes long - specific time limits were critical in vaudeville - and a salary code seems to indicate the pair were paid $250 for the week (roughly $6,700 in 2015 dollars), Monday through Saturday. This is high pay.
Callahan and Mack toured Australia in 1902. They played the Irish Village at the St. Louis World's Fair, 1904.
Francis O'Neill tells an anecdote about Mack in Australia. A man who saw several Callahan and Mack performances in Sydney approached him on the street.
- "For God's sake, Mr. McNorney," exclaimed the fascinated exile, "is there only three 'chunes' in the pipes? Night after night I've been going to hear you play, but never a 'chune' comes out of your chanter but the same three."
O'Neill points out that "McNurney was but following the custom of musicians and vocalists in the theatrical profession, who seldom vary the favorite numbers in their program." Mack knew "a bag full" of tunes, but "those he repeated so frequently on the stage were his masterpieces."
Charles Mack married Etta Bastedo of Rochester, NY, in 1904. According to the marriage record he was 36, she 17. Bastedo was a dancer and actress, in show business before her marriage as one of the three Bastedo Sisters. By 1906 she was performing with Mack. Their marriage endured and they had at least six children.
Mack started his own company of four, later three, actors and developed his own sketch "Come Back to Erin," twenty minutes long. It was a hit and he toured with this from about 1906 to 1914. Over the years the cast changed and the skit was probably adapted and refined. The story: a youthful Irish-American has made the journey to Ireland, is in Killarney. There he visits "an old-fashioned Celt, a sweet-souled mother who has lost her own son and a colleen who lends the contrast of youth to the gray hairs of the other two." The traveller tells them of the wonders of America; the old man tells him that "the little isle of his birth, after all, is wiser and greater than the land of wonders ... Then the youth brings out his bagpipes-real Irish pipes-and plays Tom Moore's tender masterpiece, 'Believe Me if All These Enduring Young Charms'.... The lad turns to go, and the curtain falls."
More than one reviewer mentions the powerful impact of Mack's playing of "Believe Me if All..." On stage he also played "The Last Rose of Summer," "Killarney," and dance music for Etta Mack.
His next project, a retrenchment of sorts, hinged on "conversation between two old Irishmen, one about to cash in and the other dropping in to cheer him up by continually referring to death, undertakers and hearses. Act finishes strong with an Irish bagpipe number by Mack and some real Irish stepping by Miss Bastedo and Charles B. Nelson." This was "A Friendly Call," and was performed from 1915 at least until 1922. One reason for the change, one suspects, is that Mack no longer seemed plausible playing "young" parts.
By 1920 vaudeville was well in decline. Competition from motion pictures and consolidation by theatre owners made vaudeville engagements more competitive, and vaudevillians faced longer work hours for less pay. Each year there were fewer places to perform.
Mack's last theatrical efforts seem to have been in the late 1920s. Productions of musical plays, "Once Upon a Time" and "A Bit of Heaven" went nowhere.
Charles and Etta McNurney and their children were living in Chicago in 1930 and 1940, according to the US Census. Charles' occupation is "Actor" in the 1930 Census; "Vault Attendant" [a bank safety deposit vault?] in the 1940 Census. Little is known about Mack's activities in this period. Lawrence McCullough, writing in 1978, says that Mack had often seen Pat Touhey play, and told Chicago piper Joe Shannon (1916-2004) "a great deal about Touhey's technique." This was probably in the 1930s.
Charles and Etta moved to Lake Worth, Florida, about 1941. This according to their son Charles Mack, Jr., whose accounts of family history are inconsistent at best. Perhaps the Macks summered in Chicago and wintered in Florida; such transient retirees are called "snowbirds." There are two references to Charlie Mack playing Irish pipes at club functions in Palm Beach, Florida, 1943 and 1944.
Charles McNurney died at Lake Worth, Florida, March 1961, 93 years old. He was buried at Hillcrest Memorial Park, West Palm Beach, Florida. Etta McNurney died in Florida July 1965, 77 years old.
Selected References
"About Town Theatrical Gossip" [Mack's set of pipes] Seattle [WA] Daily Times July 14, 1909 p. 9 column 3
GenealogyBank.com
"As You Were" [Morton and Mack] NY Vaudeville News and New York Star Feb. 23, 1929 p. 9 column 3
New York NY Vaudeville News 1929-02-23-001.Page9.pdf
"At Wonderland." [Morton and Mack review] Detroit [MI] Free Press April 16, 1895 p. 8 column 1
Newspapers.com
Blake, W. Herbert "Simple Poetry In Sketch-Act 'Come Back To Erin' is Gain to Vaudeville" Los Angeles [CA] Herald Sep. 29, 1909 p. 6 column 1
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn85042462/1909-09-29/ed-1/seq-6/
Boyd, John St. Clair "Belfast Gaelic League 'Correspondence. The Irish Pipes'," Belfast Newsletter, 24 August 1897. Quoted in Dowling, Martin Traditional Music and Irish Society: Historical Perspectives Ashgate Publishing Ltd 2014 pp. 136-7
Center for Research Libraries, "The state of the art: a comparative analysis of newspaper digitization to date", 10 April 2015" p. 9 Accessed April 9, 2018
https://www.crl.edu/sites/default/files/d6/attachments/events/ICON_Report-State_of_Digitization_final.pdf
Cope, Tom "Indian River Roundup" [article about Charles Mack, Jr., part two] Fort Pierce FL News Tribune March 8, 1963 p. 1 column 1
Access Newspaper Archive
"Correspondence ... for the current week." ["A Friendly Call"] Variety April 7, 1916 p. 36 column 1
Variety 1916 - 0234.pdf
"Events of Civic Interest Service Men's Center" Palm Beach [FL] Post-Times Aug. 13, 1944 p. 9 column 1
Newspapers.com
McCullough, Lawrence E. Irish Music in Chicago: an ethnomusicological study PhD dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1978 p. 137
Mooney, Jennifer Irish Stereotypes in Vaudeville, 1865-1905 Palgrave McMillan 2015 p. 59 [The Four Mortons]
"NEW YORK SHOW: WEEK MARCH 23RD: 1903:" vol. 1 p. 220 Series I - Managers' Report Books, 1902-1923 From the Keith-Albee Vaudeville Theatre Collection, University of Iowa [Callahan and Mack]
http://www.lib.uiowa.edu/spec-coll/msc/tomsc400/msc356/msc356.html
O'Neill, Francis Irish Minstrels and Musicians Chicago 1913 pp. 261, 344
"Play Bills This Week Empire-Rice and Barton." [conflict with the pipes] Indianapolis [IN] Journal March 5, 1899 p. 14 column 1
Library of Congress Chronicling America
http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn82015679/1899-03-05/ed-1/seq-14/
Newspaper Buffalo NY Morning Express 1898 - 2403.PDF
"With the Players" [Callahan and Mack] Syracuse NY Telegram Sep. 19, 1903 p. 5 column 3
Newspapers Syracuse NY Evening Telegram 1903 - 2257.PDF
Nick Whitmer
July 2018 additions Aug. 2020