Denver Spence joined the music industry in 1968 after having been involved with his school marching bands and school band programs since he was in elementary school. He worked as a schoo...
Gerold Hannabach was born in Schönbach, Czechoslovakia into a family with a long tradition in the building of music instruments. In 1948 he did his apprenticeship at the guitar manufactur...
Tut Taylor was a world renowned Dobro player, but did you know he partnered with George Gruhn and the two hired Randy Wood to form a music store in Nashville? Gruhn Guitars began as GTR,...
Georg Steinmeyer was the factory supervisor at the Estey Organ Company in Brattleboro, Vermont. He joined the company in the years following World War II when he moved from Germany to the...
Jim Coffin was instantly recognized at any given trade show or industry meeting as the energetic advocate for music and music making. Jim’s career as a music director and educator includ...
This audio only interview was conducted for a radio program by Dan Del Fiorentino and donated to the NAMM Oral History program: Ray Charles, or as he called himself "The Other Ray Charles...
Milton DeLugg wrote many remarkable and popular songs such as "Orange Colored Sky," recorded by Nat King Cole. He wrote TV theme songs and stacks of movie music. All the while, he was wor...
Doug Sax was the pioneering mastering engineer who helped shape the craft beginning in the late 1960s. Doug was part of the original design team for the famed Mastering Lab in Hollywood C...
Robert Laube spent over 30 years as the top salesman for Kimball Piano and Organ Company. In fact, he may very well have sold over one million organs during the big boom of the early 1970...
Mac Johnson, as she is known throughout the music industry, was the devoted wife of Mississippi Music founder Jimmy Johnson. She was also the mother of their sons, Bix and Dex, both of wh...
Miriam Bienstock was one of three founders of Atlantic Records, which set the stage for over 60 years of recordings of primarily black artists. In the early years this was one of the only...
George Roeder played the flamenco guitar and sang in Barber Shop Quartets ever since he was young. While he was taking lessons from Evelyn Breu, he took a liking to the retail business –a...
Andy Fraser took part in the second wave of the British Invasion in the late 1960s as a member of Free. He joined the group as a teenager and in fact was instrumental in the writing of t...
Mirek Jaromir Strizka opened a musical wholesale business in the early 1960s and named it European Craft. The company began as the young Czech immigrant established a business in Los Ange...
Lennie DiMuzio was told for years that he ought to write a book about his career and his many stories, so he did! Lennie was the artist relations director for Zildjian Cymbal Company for ...
Sam Denov retired as the percussionist and timpanist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra after playing with the group in concerts, on the road and in recordings beginning in 1954. Sam hel...
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...
Layton V. Rawlins was the founder of Rawlins Piano Company in Southern California and a veteran of the piano industry. Layton witnessed many of the biggest changes within the piano busine...
George Hanson’s father was hired by M. Steinert and Sons, the piano dealer in Boston, in 1900. Forty years later George would help his father out after school and on weekends to earn some...
Spider Wilson began recording with Little Jimmy Dickens in 1947 and over the years backed nearly every performer at the Grand Ole Opry as a house band guitarist from the late 1950s until ...
Bill Tregoe drove over 1,300,000 miles over the 35 years that he was a sales rep for CG Conn and later King Musical Instruments. Along the way he made life long friends with many of the d...
Clark Terry enjoyed a long and celebrated career as a trumpeter playing with nearly ever iconic jazz musician of the twentieth century. His tone and style of playing was an influence on s...
Arlette Day and her husband, John, formed Day Murray Music in 1946. The name comes from the young couple’s last name and their hometown of Murray, Utah. They worked closely together and s...
Dee Hoyt played professionally since he was a teenager including in local clubs and played for the National Guard as well as for dances. His band, the Tornados, recorded and performed ro...
Neil Hauser took over the Allen & Heath business in the late 1960s at a time when a group of young engineers had an idea for a new product. The engineers, headed by Andy Bereza, creat...
Fritz Kollitz was an expert on woods used for musical instruments and gained an international reputation for his knowledge and service to violin and guitar luthiers alike. As the founder ...
Bob See was the founder of See Factor, one of the pioneering and innovative pro-lighting and pro-sound services in the world. Bob’s influential career began when Bill Graham opened up a m...
Bob Cavanagh was once the president of the famed Boston music retailer EU Wurlitzer (not to be confused with the R. Wurlitzer Piano Company, the Wurlitzer String Company or the Wurlitzer ...
Fred Morgan was one of the few GI’s, returning home from World War II, who were accepted to the Conn School of Musical Instrument Repair the first year it started. The year was 1946 and F...
Hy Babit can be viewed on the 1966 TV tour of the NAMM Show in Chicago, which highlighted several key exhibitors to the show that year. Hy provided a review of the art of piano roll arra...
This audio only interview was conducted for a radio program by Dan Del Fiorentino and donated to the NAMM Oral History program: Joe Franklin was a music historian who had a series of radi...
DW Caffey was very young when he found himself enamored with the piano. In 1940, when he was just fifteen years old, DW taught himself how to tune pianos. He read a book and asked an ol...