The Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) is committed to providing free, universal access to the rich cultural tradition of Irish music, song and dance. If you’re able, we’d love for you to consider a donation. Any level of support will help us preserve and grow this tradition for future generations.
1912-2000
This project is co-funded by Ireland’s Department of Culture, Communications & Sport and Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade as part of America 250.
Tom Busby was a tradition bearer for uilleann pipes during the mid-twentieth century, when interest in the instrument was at its lowest ebb. He was inheritor and custodian of a remarkable treasure of knowledge, recordings, photographs and instruments. Busby was born in County Fermanagh and arrived in the United States as a teenager, where he first heard of uilleann pipes in Brooklyn in 1932. He later came to know Michael Carney, at the time probably the most popular and well-liked piper in New York City and he later married Carney’s niece, Anna Hollwitz (1916-2012). Busby became active in Irish organizations and music events, and was performing in public events by 1947. With the folk revival in the 1960s came a renewed interest in the pipes. Busby received increasing numbers of inquiries about the pipes: where to get recordings, instruments etc. From Carney, he acquired a collection of cylinder recordings of early piping by Carney himself, Patsy Touhey and others, now held at ITMA. He also inherited a remarkable collection of photographs of pipers, now at Na Píobairí Uilleann. For a time, Busby possessed several historic sets of pipes, including the Taylor set associated with Patsy Touhey. Tom and Anna settled in Massapequa Park, Long Island in the 1960s and Tom passed away in September 2000.
