Scott May knew since he was five years old that he wanted to play the organ! He fell in love with the endless possibilities of the instrument as he grew and discovered that the Hammond w...
Bruce Mitchell is a veteran of the Canadian piano and organ industry dating back to 1966 when he was hired as the Hammond Organ sales rep for Canada. Bruce has since been deeply involved ...
Peter Nguyen joined the team at Hammond Suzuki in 1998 and serves as the Chicago-based company’s Chief Financial Officer. He began as the Controller and enjoyed his early years at the com...
Ryo Okumoto began his professional musical career as a keyboardist during the height of the electronic musical instrument boom of the 1970s. The synthesizer was growing nearly every mont...
Bob Olsen often said because he did not play a musical instrument yet had a successful career in the music products industry that he was “a vegetarian in the business of prime meat.” The ...
Jerry Olson purchased a small music store in the early 1950s after teaching along-side his wife in their home town. Soon the store grew and other locations throughout Minnesota were esta...
Houston Person, after a 3-year old musical partnership with the great vocalist Etta Jones, is only now receiving the recognition he deserves as one of today’s leading instrumentalists in ...
Antoni Punti and Gabriel teamed up with Keith Mardak in 1972 to form Hal Leonard Spain. The company’s success was fueled by the home organ boom, which was an important milestone of growth...
Manel Punti is the Managing Director of Music Distribution, a wholesale business in Spain that his father established in the 1960s. Manel grew up in the music industry as well as a musica...
Jack Ripperger was the director of marketing for the Hammond Organ Company for seven years, at the height of the home organ boom in the United States during the 1960s and 1970s. During hi...
Scott Russ grew up in the music business, crawling around the floor. His parents opened a music retail store in 1947, before Scott was born. Growing up, Scott fell in love with the Hamm...
David Sancious always had records playing in his home growing up and his dad would take him to jazz clubs when he was just a child to sit by the stage so he could see the piano player. As...
Robert Schaeffer is the resident historian for Rice Music House in South Carolina. Having been in the store since he was a young boy, getting to meet with the founder and having worked i...
Roger Smith began playing the piano and singing in church at an early age, quickly falling in love with the way people reacted to the music he performed. He was introduced to the Hammond ...
Dr. Lonnie Smith was among the well respected organists who endeared himself within the music products industry as a master of the Hammond B3, who often demonstrated his skills for fellow...
Fujio Suzuki was the president of the Suzuki Musical Instrument Company in Japan in 2003 when the NAMM Foundation’s Museum of Making Music celebrated the launching of the new Hammond-Suz...
Manji Suzuki had a deep passion for the music industry. He is the founder and president of Suzuki Musical Instrument Manufacturing Company in Hamamatsu, Japan. The company began as a harm...
Tom Thompson first heard an organ in a small church as a child and knew at that moment that somehow, someway, that instrument would be a part of his life. He was right! His first job in t...
Russ Turner opened his own organ repair company in the early 1960s in the early days of the home organ boom. He worked with all of the organ dealers in and around the San Francisco Bay Ar...
Cliff Unruh has a background in marketing and was pursuing such a career when he was given the opportunity to sell Hammond Organs –and he jumped at the chance. He fell in love with the i...
Jay Valle began working in the organ industry in the 1950s and has witnessed some rather amazing changes. He was part of the organ boom of the 1960s and 70s that brought the instrument in...
Jim Whitehill provided a very important overview of the products and politics of the Norlin Music Company, which was originally named Chicago Musical Instruments (CMI), when Mr. M.H. Berl...
Gerald “Wig” Wiggins was a world renowned composer, arranger and jazz keyboardist. As an early pioneer in playing jazz on the Hammond B-3 organ, Wig had a strong interest in new and inven...
Sonny Wittkopp studied business in college and landed a job as a bookkeeper for a local music store in Washington state. This experience generated a great passion for the music industry w...
