Full Interview
Joyce Shelven was a factory worker for the Gibson Guitar Company when it was located in Kalamazoon, Michigan. She was hired in 1947 just after the war and began working in the sanding department. Joyce worked both the belt sanders as well as the hand sanders before she left the company in 1964. ...
Eddie Kramer is perhaps best known as the recording engineer for Jimi Hendrix, but he also worked for the Beatles and countless other performers during his long career. Eddie is also a clever innovator who has designed products and tools that have solved problems for recording engineers over the...
Stu Goldberg established Marina Music in San Francisco at the beginning of the guitar boom. The folk music craze was in full swing and the Beatles just hit the USA and within a few months Stu opened his own music store. His small store had a very big impact on the music industry and soon became a...
Bill Larson served as a band director for over 35 years in Montana. When he needed the support from a music store to service his bands, he called on Eckroth Music in Bismarck, ND. Bill was so impressed by the help he received that he visited the store and got to know owners, Bill and Mary Ann...
Ted Wade was raised in a house full of music! His father played trumpet with several big bands such as Clyde McCoy during the swing era. When Ted was four years old he was playing drums along with his father and brother, both on trumpet. As he grew up in the Catskills, Ted was cutting his teeth...
Jim Gurley had more stories than just about any one else in the NAMM Oral History collection! He taught guitar in Los Angles area music stores while picking up guitars at Rickenbacker Guitars and in Leo Fender’s first workshop in the late 1940s and early 50s. Jim later became one of the first...
Larry Morton grew up in a family in St. Louis that had a strong love of music. His parents provided piano lessons for his older sister and later Larry began learning music. His father encouraged him to follow his dream of being involved with music. Larry played in the marching band in high school...
Brooks Arthur began singing as an early age, and in fact began taking lessons to sing in his temple before he was a teenager. While working in the mail room of a record company, Brooks heard his first live recording and fell in love! He soon was hired to engineer some products, which lead to a...
Lamont Dozier was one of the most successful songwriters in popular music history. From 1962-1967 he teamed with Brian and Eddy Holland to write a string of impressive hit records for Motown Records, 25 of which hit number one on the Billboard Record Charts! Their list of hits includes “Baby Love...
Mike Lang was a well-respected keyboardist who can be heard on over 2,000 movie scores and countless studio recordings over his long and successful career. He worked with composers such as John Williams, Henry Mancini and Jerry Goldsmith to jazz and pop performers such as Ella Fitzgerald and Frank...