Ampeg

Gene Fresco is one of the top sales reps of our industry. As a mentor and teacher, he has provided real and practical sales methods to countless men and women in and out of the music products industry. His first love is selling and he has made a career of it and the craft of teaching it to others. His pioneering skills revolutionized the Sunn Company in the early 70s. In fact, it was Gene's idea for them to sell lighting gear –get it Sunn light! Gene took on over 20 lines over the next 30 plus years and still enjoys the craft of selling.

Chubby Jackson was the 1947 Down Beat magazine’s reader poll winner for the best bassist of the year. When the Kay Music Company of Chicago told Chubby that they would be presenting him with a new bass to mark the occasion, Chubby had one request – add a fifth string. Jackson played that bass around the world with such superstars as Louis Armstrong, Woody Herman, and Lionel Hampton. The 5-string bass soon became a standard product for bass manufacturers. Chubby was also an early promoter of the Ampeg Baby Bass model of the early 1960s. We completed several NAMM Oral History interviews with Chubby beginning in 2000 through 2002. 

Eugene Kornblum’s father formed the famed St. Louis Music Company, which played a legendary role in the music products industry during most of the 1900s. As President beginning in the 1960s, Gene expanded the company with a number of important product lines including Ampeg basses and amplifiers. Under his leadership, the territory covered by the company’s sales representatives also expanded. Gene sold the business before his retirement; both events were the end of a vital and important era in the history of the music products industry.
 

Jess Oliver was the inventor of the Ampeg Baby Bass, the first electronic upright bass instrument. The fiberglass body and unique design was key to projecting the sound of a double bass into an electric amplifier. His idea was one of the many used by the Ampeg Company. When the Baby Bass was introduced in the early 1960s it was endorsed by jazzman, Chubby Jackson, in a series of well-received advertisements. Jess also designed and assembled a series of innovative amplifiers including the famed B-15 Porterflex for Ampeg.