Peter Gotcher played drums in a band with Evan Brooks and they both became interested in creating electronics to change sounds. Together the two school mates created digital audio machine...
Alan Friedman opened an accounting firm and soon focused on the music industry. As a musician himself, Alan knew he could offer services to the music industry as a specialized accounting ...
Gary Francisco opened his own music store in Southern California in the mid 1960s. Over the years he developed a strong business calling on schools and creating lesson programs. After clo...
Jerry Donegan began his career in the music industry in October, 1966, when his brother arranged for him to get a job in the shipping department of the Zildjian Cymbal Company. He found t...
William Dollarhide was the president and co-owner, along with his wife Margaret, of Dollarhide’s Music Center in Pensacola, Florida. He grew up in a very musical family, with his mother a...
Spencer Davis hit it big with a string of rock songs during the heyday of the British Invasion of the 1960s. His band, The Spencer Davis Group, started with a school mate named Muff Winwo...
Tony D’Andrea is the grandson of Luigi D’Andrea, the innovative founder of the famed pick company. After college, Tony joined the company and worked long and hard to expand the business o...
Rosemary D’Andrea has always been interested in art and in fact had a series of galleries in and around Long Island, New York. So when her husband, the president of the D’Andrea Guitar Pi...
Michael Ciravolo is the president of Schecter Guitar Research and the designer behind the company’s Diamond Series guitars. Schecter was formed in 1976 to provide replacement parts for g...
Ed Cherney won a Grammy Award for his work as recording engineer for the 1989 Bonnie Raitt’s album “Nick of Time.” This was just one of his many projects as mixer and engineer. He has wor...
Joe Castronovo began working for Unicord in the months before the company was sold and became KORG USA. With a solid team, which included the late Mike Kovins, under the leadership of KOR...
Lou Capece began selling musical products in the 1960s and has since become one of the industry’s largest musical instrument wholesale distributors. One of the successes of the company ha...
Kim Breedlove began building banjos in the 1960s, during the Folk Music movement and the popularity of such performers as Pete Seeger. After working with his brother for a few months he m...
Joe Bergamini is a Broadway and rock band drummer who began writing about the art of percussion for magazines before becoming the Senior Drum Editor for Hudson Music. His own publications...
Gary Bennett entered the music products industry in 1964 working for Chesbro Music in Idaho. At the time of his NAMM Oral History interview, taped during the NAMM Show in January 2012, Ga...
Mike Bates is the senior member of the Institutional Solutions Group in the Keyboard Division of Yamaha Corporation of America. Over the last 28 years with the company, Mike’s career has ...
Gabby Barajas joined Merlin 5 in the early 1990s to work with the company founder and designer, Bill Gerien. The company has become an industry leader in manufacturing, providing machined...
Charles Avsharian is the CEO of Shar Musical Products, which he established in 1962 along with his brother, Michael. The brothers toured for years as professional musicians and along wit...
Vinny Appice began playing drums at a young age, just like his older brother Carmine. Vinny played drums ever since the age of eight and by age sixteen he was working with John Lennon! Hi...
Rebecca Apodaca was the President of A & D Music Incorporated in Southern California. She played music as a child and gravitated to the electric bass. Her father and others such as Do...
Peter Sides is the president and third generation of his family to operate the Robert M. Sides Music Center Pennsylvania. His grandfather opened the store out of his home, selling and rep...
Carol Sides married into the Robert M. Sides Music Center family in the 1960s and soon became an important part of the company’s educational programs and music therapy activity. She work...
Gary Myers is known within the music industry for his decades of retail service in southern California beginning in the 1980s with Sherman Clay. To record fans he is best known for a seri...
Bernie Worrell began playing classical music as a small child and it soon led to his life-long passion for music! He met George Clinton, who at the time was leading a Doo-Wop group called...
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...
Hector Olivera was born in Argentina where he studied organ with his father, a noted church organist. In 1965 Hector studied at Julliard School of Music and soon after that began providin...
Won Jung Kim is the president of Shimro Musical Instruments Company in Seoul, South Korea. The company is a leader in manufacturing all levels of bowed instruments and in recent years has...
Nancy Groth-Kersten is the owner of the Groth Music store in Bloomington, Minnesota. The store is home to a full line of musical instruments, outstanding customer service and one of the m...
Scott Houston is known as The Piano Guy thanks to his long running PBS teaching show. During the programs long run Scott has encouraged thousands of people to become music makers, making ...
Alysha Sides-Greevy grew up in the music store that her grandfather established in 1937 and has enjoyed working in music retail along side her parents and brother. The Robert M. Sides Mus...
