The Beatles
Sara Michaelson grew up in the music store her father, Frank Hessy, established in Liverpool, England in the late 1950s. Hessy’s Music was THE store in town to find all of the local bands and to learn of their scheduled gigs. All four members of the Beatles purchased instruments at Hessy’s Music...
Richard Harrison owns and operates several music retail stores in the United Kingdom including well-known stores on Denmark Street. The street in London is often called the English Tin Pan Alley with shop after shop offering guitars, basses, drums, saxophones, sheet music and so much more. The best...
Alan Parsons is known throughout the world for his innovative recordings in the 1970s and 1980s with the Alan Parsons Project, but did you know he was also an audio engineer who worked on such landmark albums as the last two albums by the Beatles and Pink Floyd’s "Dark Side of the Moon”? His studio...
Ken Parker began building guitars and basses, first for his brother then for other players, in the early 1970s. He fell in love with arch-tops and became one of the best-known guitar luthiers in the industry. After learning his trade in New York in the 1970s and 80s, Ken met Larry Fishman and...
John D’Addario’s family history in the music industry can be traced back to the 1670s when Donato D’Addario worked as a “cordaro” – the Italian word for “string maker.”
Since that time the family has perfected the art of handcrafting strings as well as other music accessories. John’s father had a...
Dick Schory had a very successful career as a composer and arranger of percussive music. With over a dozen albums as a musician and arranger and another 400 as a producer, Dick has made a significant contribution to music. Dick also worked for the Ludwig Drum Company as a sales and marketing...
John Connolly established the Connolly Music Company (originally Connolly & Co., Inc.) back in 1970. Best known for distributing such brands as Thomastik-Infeld and König & Meyer, the company remains a family owned enterprise, with John's son, Jake, now at the helm. In 1954 John was hired...
Brian Kehew played a big role in the NAMM Foundation’s Museum of Making Music’s 2009-2010 Waves of Inspiration: The Legacy of Bob Moog exhibit, which provided the NAMM Resource Center a chance to interview him for this Oral History program. Brian discussed his personal background in music and the...
Ravi Shankar was called the Godfather of World Music by his long time friend George Harrison. Ravi’s role in bringing Indian music to the world was the beginning of many musical exchanges that have since been referred to as world music. Ravi’s role as a player is only matched by his amazing...
Jimmy Mays performed rock and country music for over 30 years. Along the way he kept his day job, working at Bill Higgins Music from nearly the beginning. Some 40 years later Jimmy stands next to the owners, Nancy and Bill Higgins, to serve their customers, each and every day. As Jimmy put it “This...