Scott Summerhays was the President of the company his parents established in Salt Lake City back in 1936. Scott and his brother Briant worked together to grow the family business and even...
Bruce Swedien was working with Quincy Jones when Michael Jackson asked the two if they would work on his upcoming album, entitled “Thriller.” It became the biggest selling album on the pl...
Mike Korpak enjoyed his work in the factory at Gibson Guitars beginning back in the 1960s in Kalamazoo, Michigan. During his career at Gibson, Mike was able to grow into management and ra...
Candido Camero was born in Cuba on April 22, 1921. By the age of four he was already interested in percussive instruments--a field he would revolutionize by blending Latin beats with jazz...
Joe Ussery was the supply manager for the Baldwin Piano factory in Greenwood, Mississippi when he first joined the company in 1973. He later helped manage the raw materials for Greenwood ...
Mari Mach spent nearly 40 years in the music industry in and around Elkhart, Indiana. She began her career in the sales department working for C. G. Conn for four years before being offer...
John Kuziel was a long time factory worker for the Gibson Guitar Company when it was located in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He worked as a final inspector for the guitar line and later was in t...
Viola Smith Viola played drums in a number of big bands and small combos during her career in music. She joined Phil Spitalny's all-female orchestra as the drummer and later appeared in s...
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...
Bud DiFluri enjoyed a long and successful career in the music industry in both retail and manufacturing. He managed the Yamaha band and orchestra department in New York City with a focus ...
Horst Mucha was one of the most recognizable faces within the music products industry. As a past president of Hohner and a pioneer in the expansion of the company’s product line, Horst tr...
Chip Wise served in the piano business for over fifty years and enjoyed the customers he met and the people of the music industry. During the early days of the NAMM Oral History program m...
Richie Jones Jr. began playing drums professionally when he was 12 years old for teen clubs and skating rinks. While gigging, he developed skills in production and worked for Morris Broth...
Rocco Prestia grew up in Northern California where he began playing guitar as a teenager before joining the group Tower of Power just after the famous band was formed. It was during these...
Bugs Bower was one of the great characters of music publishing that helped re-direct the industry following World War II. Before and during the war, Bugs was a musician and arranger who p...
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...
WS Holland played drums behind Johnny Cash for over 40 years! The man put the beat to most of Johnny’s greatest recordings and his innovations in drumming inspired countless musicians aro...
Roy Head was born a sharecropper's son in the tiny town of Three Rivers, Texas. Growing up listening to every style of music available on his small radio, Roy became heavily influenced by...
Ira Sullivan was just three years old when he pulled his father’s trumpet out from behind the couch and began blowing into it. His father began teaching him how to play and by the time li...
Jack Simpson worked for RCA for nearly 40 years beginning at the time when the electronics and recording company was a regular exhibitor at the NAMM Trade Shows. Jack also became a jazz ...
Sanjiro Kawamorita was drafted into the Japanese Army during World War II. He served under Shigeru Kawai who hired Kawamorita-San and other soldiers from his unit after the war. He remain...
Hideo Nonaka was the chairman of Nonaka Boeki Company, a music instrument distributor located in Yokohama, Japan. His father began importing musical recordings in a business that was burn...
Ruth Kadison enjoyed her role as a NAMM Foundation’s Museum of Making Music volunteer, and applied many of her talents and skills to the organization over the years. Her love of music go...
Dave Olsen’s passion for music began when he was eight years old and his mother, who also played, gave Dave lessons. He later played French horn for the school band and piano for the hig...
Michael Paul, known as MP, always had an interest in the visual arts, especially those that could involve multiple formats. When he had the chance to create light and color programs for ...
Manji Suzuki had a deep passion for the music industry. He is the founder and president of Suzuki Musical Instrument Manufacturing Company in Hamamatsu, Japan. The company began as a harm...
Steve Rauch began his career in the music publishing business in the early 1960s. While working for several leaders in the industry, Steve developed his skills and knowledge that he would...
Donald Johnson was known throughout the industry as DJ. He began working in music retail in 1958 in the San Jose, California, area before joining Coast Wholesale in 1961. It was an intere...
Trini Lopez became an early Latin-American pop singer with a string of recordings in the late 1950s and 60s including "If I Had a Hammer" and "Lemon Tree." Frank Sinatra took him under hi...
Michael Nugent was the former president of Norlin Corporation. He joined the company when it was still Chicago Musical Instrument Corporation (CMI). M.H. Berlin, CMI’s founder, had purcha...
Bryce Taylor was one of the best known and respected bandmasters in the state of Texas. His school bands performed at the Midwest Band Clinic, TMEA, and the Texas Bandmaster’s Association...
Buddy Harman Jr. followed in the footsteps of his legendary father, Buddy Harman, one of the most influential studio drummers in Nashville history. Since his father’s passing in 2008, Bud...
