Mac Wiseman joined the Foggy Mountain Boys in 1946, the same year the legendary bluegrass band was formed. The groups two founders, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, formed their own group...
Peter Tork was an original member of the Monkees and enjoyed great success on TV and the top of the pop charts during the mid and late 1960s. Years later, Peter admitted that the cast mem...
Fred Foster is a legendary name in Nashville music history. His role first as a record promoter then producer helped the careers of many performers and resulted in hundreds of hit recordi...
Ken Hyams was a key franchise owner of Altec Lansing in the early days of consumer electronics. He worked for a Los Angeles retailer for audio, consumer-electronic, products in the late 1...
Harry Hirsch was the studio designer and audio engineer behind several important achievements in audio engineering. He built such studios as SoundMixers in the Brill Building in New York ...
Paul Hostetter’s career as a luthier dates back to 1963, although his passion for music may have been born when he was. He started by giving guitar lessons before he began building instru...
Teresa Leithold began teaching music in 1956 and conducted her last lesson just ten days before she passed away at the age of 87 on February 13, 2019. Music was her passion! While her hu...
Tony Acosta had a dream to make the world’s finest classical guitar strings. He began working nights to perfect his product and build relationships within the industry and slowly gathere...
Jim Dunlop started the Dunlop Manufacturing company in 1965 in Benicia, California, and followed his dream to provide quality products for fellow musicians. Along the way he created the D...
George Klein first met Elvis Presley when the two attended Humes High School in Memphis. Over the years, George became one of Elvis’ closest friends. He was a part of many of the King’s i...
Harold Bradley was one of the most recorded guitarists in the history of Nashville. Harold and his brother, the legendary producer, Owen Bradley, created a new feel in country music, a st...
Don Gayle served as a technical writer for Shure for three decades, after a long and distinguished career as a professor of literature. While at Shure, Don’s language skills were key to t...
Reggie Young is known throughout the world as one of the great studio session players referred to as the Memphis Boys. He played guitar on thousands of recordings as a session player in ...
Steve Madaio played trumpet on most of Stevie Wonders recordings during the innovative and creative period between 1971 and 1976. Stevie was experimenting with electric keyboards and syn...
Bonnie Guitar produced a series of hit recordings for her label, Dolton, in the 1950s and 60s. Among the labels most popular acts were the Fleetwoods and the Ventures. Bonnie even recorde...
Alan R. Pearlman was nicknamed “ARP” as a kid growing up in New York City, so it seemed the perfect name for a company when he was later designing electronic musical instruments. The firs...
Michael Lipe turned his passion for guitars into his own, successful business. Founder and owner of Lipe Guitars in California, Michael gained experience for his trade by building a serie...
Kern Kennedy tickled the ivories on a number of early rock and roll and rockabilly recordings back in the 1950s. It was the heyday for Sun Studios in Memphis right after the success of El...
Artur Teller created a successful career by producing highly regarded violin bridges and supplying them to luthiers in and around his hometown of Bubenreuth, Germany. Like many of the ins...
Scott Rodgers was offered a whopping $5.00 an hour from his friend’s dad to help with the staging at a Deep Purple concert in 1973. It was the start of his career in the music industry an...
Ace Cannon grew up in Mississippi singing with his father on street corners and in church, and he knew even as a small child that he wanted to have a life in music. When he was ten years...
Carl Janelli played several instruments but was most fond of the saxophone. He began his career during the big band era and performed with Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey before embarking on a won...
Shep Shepherd co-wrote the now classic instrumental “Honky Tonk Part 2” while playing in the Bill Doggett band. The recording became a hit in the late 1950s and helped build a stronger ...
Roy Clark, the Country Music Hall of Fame guitar player, was always proud of his connection with the music products industry. In addition to the products he endorsed over his long career,...
Kurt Kaiser worked for Word Music beginning in 1959. Not only did he witness many of the changes to church music, many credit him for creating what is now known as contemporary Christian...
Jack Shallat was a professional violin player who landed several gigs with traveling bands in the 1930s and 40s. During that time he met Buddy Rogers and both men opened separate music s...
Herb Remington was the steel guitarist for Bob Wills and the Texas Playboy who built his own line of guitars called Remington Steel. Among his fascinating history: being long time person...
Mitsuo Kasahara served as the first president of Yamaha Corporation of America after setting up the branch office in Southern California in 1961. Three years earlier he established the f...
Dorothy Dunkley co-founded Dunkley Music Stores in Boise, Idaho, with her husband Bill. She took over the store while Bill was on the road selling pianos door to door in the early years o...
Giorgio Giannini proudly recalled the beginning of his family’s involvement in the music industry as part of his interview for the NAMM Oral History collection. Mr. Tranquillo Giannini w...
Vivian Majeski had just married John when she visited the NAMM Show for the first time. The year was 1951 and John, who would later follow in his father's footsteps as editor of The Musi...
Big Jay McNeely was there when the emotions of rhythm and blues gave birth to rock and roll. His honkin' sax style gave raw and bold tones to the feelings behind the R&B and Jump Swin...
