Howard Rumsey may have played the first electric bass to be recorded on a jazz recording. While performing with Stan Kenton’s first orchestra in the early fall of 1941, Howard was asked ...
Don Canedy was a beloved band director and professor at Southern Illinois University before being hired by the Roger’s Drum Company in 1961. Don played drums beginning at the age of 10 an...
Henry Wickham knew the secret of a good sounding piano, the cast iron plates. For decades Henry was the president of the Wickham Piano Company in Ohio, where many of the plates for Steinw...
John Galante was the accountant for the Story & Clark Piano Company beginning in the late 1950s. John oversaw the growth and development of the piano industry during those years and w...
Gunther Schuller said he always had a passion for music. As a small boy he was photographed playing a conductor, a position he would later hold for many symphonies around the world. Howev...
Gordon Pfund spent his life in the music industry that he loved. At an early age he began working for Werlein For Music in Louisiana and became enamored with the piano and organ market. H...
Peter Paul Prier began playing the violin when he was 8 years old, growing up in Germany. He studied violin making while he was a teenager and in 1959 set out to America to open his own v...
Herbert Fischbach spent his entire working career in the design and crafting of brass musical instruments. As was the tradition in the German village of Markneukirchen, Herbert studied th...
Lloyd Fillio grew up in the band instrument capital, Elkhart, Indiana. His father worked in the industry as did his uncle and cousin (Ernie Kenaga who was also interviewed). It seemed nat...
Dr. Alfio Leone was among the world’s best loved luthier of traditional Italian musical instruments. He learned his craft by years of studying the vintage instrument in the region of Sici...
Abe Wollam was a close associate of Bud Reglein. Beginning in the 1940s, Abe worked with Bud at the jj Babbitt Mouthpiece Company out of Elkhart, IN. Abe developed strong engineering skil...
Gene Fresco was one of the top sales reps of our industry. As a mentor and teacher, he provided real and practical sales methods to countless men and women in and out of the music product...
A. A. (Sid) La Grandeur was trained in band instrument repair in Elkhart, Indiana before returning to Santa Barbara, California where he opened his own shop. The repair shop soon became a...
B.B. King spoke of his great love of music making and provided sound advice for those who want to play an instrument. He smiled as he recalled buying his first guitar amplifier and spoke ...
Gary Burgett and his brother Kirk established PianoDisc out of their piano retail store in Sacramento, California in the late 1970s. Gary was a pianist and music teacher with a successful...
Joe Guth’s career in the music products industry began with a short stint with Selmer and as a former band director he brought a great perspective to selling instruments to school music p...
Dick Bell was surprised by the impact he had on the music industry, a fact that became clear to him at the NAMM Show 2009, when the Roland Corp gave him a retirement party and NAMM reques...
Wil White worked for Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center for nearly 30 years! It all began on October 6, 1987 when he was looking for a job and answered an ad for a cashier. He was hi...
Denver Spence joined the music industry in 1968 after having been involved with his school marching bands and school band programs since he was in elementary school. He worked as a schoo...
Gerold Hannabach was born in Schönbach, Czechoslovakia into a family with a long tradition in the building of music instruments. In 1948 he did his apprenticeship at the guitar manufactur...
Tut Taylor was a world renowned Dobro player, but did you know he partnered with George Gruhn and the two hired Randy Wood to form a music store in Nashville? Gruhn Guitars began as GTR,...
Georg Steinmeyer was the factory supervisor at the Estey Organ Company in Brattleboro, Vermont. He joined the company in the years following World War II when he moved from Germany to the...
Jim Coffin was instantly recognized at any given trade show or industry meeting as the energetic advocate for music and music making. Jim’s career as a music director and educator includ...
This audio only interview was conducted for a radio program by Dan Del Fiorentino and donated to the NAMM Oral History program: Ray Charles, or as he called himself "The Other Ray Charles...
Milton DeLugg wrote many remarkable and popular songs such as "Orange Colored Sky," recorded by Nat King Cole. He wrote TV theme songs and stacks of movie music. All the while, he was wor...
Doug Sax was the pioneering mastering engineer who helped shape the craft beginning in the late 1960s. Doug was part of the original design team for the famed Mastering Lab in Hollywood C...
Robert Laube spent over 30 years as the top salesman for Kimball Piano and Organ Company. In fact, he may very well have sold over one million organs during the big boom of the early 1970...
Mac Johnson, as she is known throughout the music industry, was the devoted wife of Mississippi Music founder Jimmy Johnson. She was also the mother of their sons, Bix and Dex, both of wh...
Miriam Bienstock was one of three founders of Atlantic Records, which set the stage for over 60 years of recordings of primarily black artists. In the early years this was one of the only...
George Roeder played the flamenco guitar and sang in Barber Shop Quartets ever since he was young. While he was taking lessons from Evelyn Breu, he took a liking to the retail business –a...
Andy Fraser took part in the second wave of the British Invasion in the late 1960s as a member of Free. He joined the group as a teenager and in fact was instrumental in the writing of t...
