Abe Wollam was a close associate of Bud Reglein. Beginning in the 1940s, Abe worked with Bud at the jj Babbitt Mouthpiece Company out of Elkhart, IN. Abe developed strong engineering skil...
Gene Fresco was one of the top sales reps of our industry. As a mentor and teacher, he provided real and practical sales methods to countless men and women in and out of the music product...
A. A. (Sid) La Grandeur was trained in band instrument repair in Elkhart, Indiana before returning to Santa Barbara, California where he opened his own shop. The repair shop soon became a...
B.B. King spoke of his great love of music making and provided sound advice for those who want to play an instrument. He smiled as he recalled buying his first guitar amplifier and spoke ...
Gary Burgett and his brother Kirk established PianoDisc out of their piano retail store in Sacramento, California in the late 1970s. Gary was a pianist and music teacher with a successful...
Joe Guth’s career in the music products industry began with a short stint with Selmer and as a former band director he brought a great perspective to selling instruments to school music p...
Dick Bell was surprised by the impact he had on the music industry, a fact that became clear to him at the NAMM Show 2009, when the Roland Corp gave him a retirement party and NAMM reques...
Wil White worked for Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center for nearly 30 years! It all began on October 6, 1987 when he was looking for a job and answered an ad for a cashier. He was hi...
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...
