Harry Rosenbloom was the founder of Medley Music and one of the true pioneers of import relations with the Japanese beginning in the late 1950s. He developed and maintained key partnershi...
Morris Diamond sat down with us for his NAMM Oral History interview at the age of 97 and recalled his career in music which started when he was 15 years old. He was hired to be the “band ...
Joyce Porras was hired to work at Reynald’s Music Store for two weeks in 1946, to help with the Christmas holiday rush. She continued to work for the company until it was sold in the 1980...
William Heese had a reputation like no other in the music publishing world, a reputation well deserved. Bill was not only a mainstay in the industry for over 40 years, he was a tireless p...
Kurt Glaesel was born into a violin-making family, which dates back to 1720, but it was Kurt who made his family name nationally known. After a noted 20 year career with Heinrich Roth, Ku...
Dick Dale was the King of the Surf Guitar whose driving style redefined instrumental music in the early 1960s. His music conjures the mood of the era so successfully that many of his tune...
Bob Hazard was a very familiar face in the Memphis music retail market for over sixty years. His piano and organ business played an important role during the boom of home organs during th...
Hal Blaine was perhaps the most recorded drummer from the California recording studios of the 1950s-'70s. His influential style can be heard on more than 170 number one hit songs and 450...
Jim Slutz served as the Professor of Music Business at Indiana State University before his retirement in 2004. Former NAMM President Mr. F.D. "Bud" Streep from Orlando was the first perso...
Mac Wiseman joined the Foggy Mountain Boys in 1946, the same year the legendary bluegrass band was formed. The groups two founders, Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs, formed their own group...
Peter Tork was an original member of the Monkees and enjoyed great success on TV and the top of the pop charts during the mid and late 1960s. Years later, Peter admitted that the cast mem...
Fred Foster is a legendary name in Nashville music history. His role first as a record promoter then producer helped the careers of many performers and resulted in hundreds of hit recordi...
Ken Hyams was a key franchise owner of Altec Lansing in the early days of consumer electronics. He worked for a Los Angeles retailer for audio, consumer-electronic, products in the late 1...
Harry Hirsch was the studio designer and audio engineer behind several important achievements in audio engineering. He built such studios as SoundMixers in the Brill Building in New York ...
Paul Hostetter’s career as a luthier dates back to 1963, although his passion for music may have been born when he was. He started by giving guitar lessons before he began building instru...
Teresa Leithold began teaching music in 1956 and conducted her last lesson just ten days before she passed away at the age of 87 on February 13, 2019. Music was her passion! While her hu...
Tony Acosta had a dream to make the world’s finest classical guitar strings. He began working nights to perfect his product and build relationships within the industry and slowly gathere...
Jim Dunlop started the Dunlop Manufacturing company in 1965 in Benicia, California, and followed his dream to provide quality products for fellow musicians. Along the way he created the D...
George Klein first met Elvis Presley when the two attended Humes High School in Memphis. Over the years, George became one of Elvis’ closest friends. He was a part of many of the King’s i...
Harold Bradley was one of the most recorded guitarists in the history of Nashville. Harold and his brother, the legendary producer, Owen Bradley, created a new feel in country music, a st...
Don Gayle served as a technical writer for Shure for three decades, after a long and distinguished career as a professor of literature. While at Shure, Don’s language skills were key to t...
Reggie Young is known throughout the world as one of the great studio session players referred to as the Memphis Boys. He played guitar on thousands of recordings as a session player in ...
Steve Madaio played trumpet on most of Stevie Wonders recordings during the innovative and creative period between 1971 and 1976. Stevie was experimenting with electric keyboards and syn...
Bonnie Guitar produced a series of hit recordings for her label, Dolton, in the 1950s and 60s. Among the labels most popular acts were the Fleetwoods and the Ventures. Bonnie even recorde...
Alan R. Pearlman was nicknamed “ARP” as a kid growing up in New York City, so it seemed the perfect name for a company when he was later designing electronic musical instruments. The firs...
Michael Lipe turned his passion for guitars into his own, successful business. Founder and owner of Lipe Guitars in California, Michael gained experience for his trade by building a serie...
Kern Kennedy tickled the ivories on a number of early rock and roll and rockabilly recordings back in the 1950s. It was the heyday for Sun Studios in Memphis right after the success of El...
Artur Teller created a successful career by producing highly regarded violin bridges and supplying them to luthiers in and around his hometown of Bubenreuth, Germany. Like many of the ins...
Scott Rodgers was offered a whopping $5.00 an hour from his friend’s dad to help with the staging at a Deep Purple concert in 1973. It was the start of his career in the music industry an...
Ace Cannon grew up in Mississippi singing with his father on street corners and in church, and he knew even as a small child that he wanted to have a life in music. When he was ten years...
Carl Janelli played several instruments but was most fond of the saxophone. He began his career during the big band era and performed with Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey before embarking on a won...
Shep Shepherd co-wrote the now classic instrumental “Honky Tonk Part 2” while playing in the Bill Doggett band. The recording became a hit in the late 1950s and helped build a stronger ...