David Leed

David Leed was born in 1937 in the United Kingdom and spent the war years and most of his childhood in Australia.  His love of music started when he was a young boy learning to play the cornet in his local Salvation Army.  After returning to London and finishing school David played the cornet in the Coldstream Guards Band for 3 years. In 1957 he went to South Africa with an Australian jam making and fruit canning company called Jones and Co.  Not liking the smell of boiling guavas he went to Boosey and Hawkes in Johannesburg to buy a trumpet so he could play in the local bands and walked out with a job. Later, David became the General Manager for the Hammond Organ Company, which had a factory for Hammond-- in fact the fourth largest operation for the company in the world. While backstage for a musical called The Most Happy Fella, where he played in the orchestra and she sang in the chorus, David met his wife Louise and they married in February 1964. After having four children they moved back to Europe where David was hired by Kimble Pianos; he then moved to Chicago Musical Instruments (CMI), which later became Norlin. In the 1980s David and the family moved back to the Netherlands where he was the Vice President International for Gibson Guitars. After a short time with UMI in Cleveland, David and Louise established their own musical instrument accessory agency in 1988 called Leed Representation