Deceased
Edna Mae Burnam authored the now classic piano training books “A Dozen a Day” to help beginners learn in a fun and meaningful way. Her books have been critical to millions of young pianists around the world for over 60 years. Edna Mae wrote her first song back in 1935 but was more interested in...
Jimmie D. Webb operated a small music shop in Antioch, California, which was also the headquarters for his amplifier business. The Webb Amps were widely used by electric blues and rock bands, mostly in San Francisco beginning in the early 1970s. Although he never developed a production line or...
Morley Thompson’s financial background was a key element in the expansion of the Baldwin Piano Company during the 1980s. Morley created a credit company and finance programs under the Baldwin name to branch off from the company’s core technology and invest on a larger scale. The changes came in the...
Sam Hinton was a national treasure. It seems appropriate to use that term when talking about him because he become an important and invaluable preservationist of some of our nation's greatest treasures, folk songs. Sam spent many years traveling the backwoods of this country in search of...
Lowell Kiesel, as the founder of the southern California guitar company Carvin, joined the ranks with Leo Fender, Paul A. Bigsby, and the Rickenbacker Company, in establishing the new era of electric guitar. In 1946 he formed L. C. Kiesel Company winding pickups on an old sewing machine. As the...
John P. Smith was one of thousands of young musicians who toured the country on the buses, cars, and trains that carried the territory bands of the swing era from high school sock hops to hotel ballrooms. John’s trombone skills made him a sought-after musician who worked with several of the name...
R.C. Allen was a guitar luthier that used the style of his many friends of the era in the early 1950s in Southern California when guitar innovators were reshaping the instrument and grooming it for a new birth. RC was building his own unique instruments when Leo Fender and Lowell Kiesel of Carvin...
Eleanor West and her husband Pearl established a music store in Iowa City just a year after getting married in 1940. Eleanor was the bookkeeper in the early years of West Music Company and was known to make a penny last during the Great Depression and World War II. She also played an important role...
Nick Peck’s entire face lights up whenever he talks about a great school music program! The son of a band director, the passion seems to be in his blood. After taking over the store his father started in Greenville, South Carolina, Nick joined the NAMM board in 1969. He rose to the top becoming...
James Johnson was first and foremost a band director -- a well respected one at that! He opened Mississippi Music while still teaching and soon became involved with a long list of industry organizations. He added his insight and knowledge as President of NAMM, President of AMC, and as an honored...