David Lindley grew up close to the Folk Music Center in Claremont, California, where he was exposed to stringed instruments from around the world. He also worked for Berry Grassmuek Music...
John Logan became hooked on the Folk music craze and picked up the banjo as a result of the inspiration he felt from the genre. While attending the University of Tennessee, he formed a fo...
Trini Lopez became an early Latin-American pop singer with a string of recordings in the late 1950s and 60s including "If I Had a Hammer" and "Lemon Tree." Frank Sinatra took him under hi...
David Magagna had an incredible career selling guitars for some of the biggest names in the industry. He worked for the government out of high school and attended college in Georgetown b...
Pete McClelland teamed up with his wife to open a folk instrument music store in London in 1975. The idea was new and it was unclear if they would be successful, but they dedicated themse...
John McEuen is a founding member of Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, considered to be one of the most successful folk-rock groups in history. He played with the band from 1966 to 1986 and took par...
Roger McGuinn got a transistor radio from his parents as a young kid and was never the same after hearing Elvis Presley. He instantly picked up the guitar and it changed his life forever....
David Millard was a teenager when he first walked into Folk Music Center, his local musical instrument store in Claremont, California. The now iconic retailer was a true mom-and-pop opera...
Chuck Neitzel joined Deering Banjo in January 1979 having previously been a woodworker with antique furniture. Chuck also brought with him a deep respect and passion for bluegrass music, ...
Tracy Newman Tracy Newman jumped into the Folk music scene in the early 1960s just as the genre was making its sweep across the country. She was among the early members of the New Christy...
Hiroaki Oh-oka sat on a thin mat in front of a leg-less table in his traditional Japanese home where he outlined the history of the bamboo flutes his five- man company produced. The compa...
Milt Okun was the founder of Cherry Lane Music Publishing. His career in music, outside of his own playing, began as a record producer. He had success during the folk movement of the 1950...
Tom Paxton spoke eloquently about the role folk music played during critical events in American history, such as the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s for which he was involved with. Tom...
Norbert Putnam is a studio musician’s studio musician. With a career that includes playing on most of the early Muscle Shoals recordings as well as hundreds of tracks with Elvis Presley, ...
Mickey Raphael grew up with a passion for music and was recruited to play sousaphone and tuba in his high-school marching band. While this was his excuse to get out of gym class, Mickey r...
Del Rey lives and breathes musical passion! Since she was a child she had the skills and desire to communicate through music and soon realized her playing brought happiness to others. The...
Mary Faith Rhoads Lewis grew up on a farm outside of Allentown, Pennsylvania, where her mother played the piano and encouraged her children to play an instrument. Mary Faith began playin...
Bob Riskin started working for McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Santa Monica just a few years after it opened in 1958. Before long the shop was abuzz with the folk music boom and later played an ...
Saul Rosenthal has been driven by two ideals, equal rights for all people and supporting music and music makers whenever possible! After earning his Ph.D., Saul taught sociology at the co...
Pete Seeger was the American folk icon who made it a personal goal to bring peace to the world by getting people to sing! His role in the folk music movement, beginning in the 1930's, fo...
Bob Shane was among the most influential performers of the folk music boom of the late 1950s and 60s. As an original member of the Kingston Trio, Bob was at the cornerstone of the Americ...
Phee Sherline brought her passion for music to NAMM’s Museum of Making Music a docent and gallery attendant. She was a young adult when the Folk Music boom occurred during the 1960s and 7...
Jodi Siegel grew up in a musical family and developed a passion for music at a young age. Jodi started playing the ukulele because of its size but quickly moved onto the guitar. A big inf...
Marc Silber has had a series of music stores during his long and colorful career including Fretted Instruments, located in Greenwich Village, New York and Marc Silber’s Music in Berkeley,...
Bob Smakula built his first dulcimer when he was 14 years old. Having grown up all around the roots music of West Virginia, Bob loved all aspects of musical instruments. Along with play...
Rocky Smolin was surrounded by music as a kid and gravitated toward the guitar during the Folk boom of the 1960s. As his career in software development grew, music was set aside for a whi...
Harry Sparks is the founder of the Famous Old Time Music Company in Cincinnati, Ohio. Harry grew up in the folk and bluegrass era of the 1960s and joined a band at a young age. Over the y...
Ken Tobias loved repairing guitars for himself and his friends and was able to turn it into a business in the early 1970s when he opened Tobias Guitars in Downers Grove, Illinois. One of ...
Happy Traum began his musical career in the 1960s, greatly influenced by the folk movement that had gripped the culture in America. He and his late brother, Artie, helped establish a New ...
Jane Traum and her husband Happy, are the founders of Homespun Music, which for decades has offered a growing collection of musical instrument training classes. Happy began with a new cla...
Harry Tuft is a true legend in the world of Folk music! As founder of the Denver Folklore Center, he has provided instruments to music makers of all ages. As a promoter of all things folk...
Sylvia Tyson wrote songs that a generation sang, and she also recorded songs by other songwriters which helped define the Folk Music revival of the 1960s. In 1962 she wrote “You Were On M...
