Guitars
Don Oriolo grew up in a very creative home. His father was the cartoonist behind such characters as Casper the Friendly Ghost and Felix the Cat. Don developed a passion for music as a child and played in bands growing up, as well as writing songs. His introduction into the music products industry...
Rick Shubb has always been fascinated with bluegrass music and its instruments. He has recorded and performed often playing his five-string banjo. He grew up in the Berkeley area and met many performers including the members of the Warlocks that would later become the Grateful Dead. Rick designed...
Marty Golden is the founder of the Canadian music distribution company JAM Industries. Marty began his career in retail, first working for his father in a pawnshop and later a music store. He began making his own line of guitar amplifiers he named JAM (which is comprised of the first letter of his...
Mike Ladd was one of the first music retailers in the United States to provide custom-made guitars. He had three locations in Memphis, the last of which was right across the street from Graceland, Elvis Presley’s famed mansion. In fact, Mike made a custom guitar for Elvis, along with many other...
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...
Robert Petteruti sat in the showroom of Twin City Music in Providence, RI, for his NAMM Oral History interview. The showroom is in the store his father opened in the 1930s and within the same building his grandfather owned since 1921. To say there was a lot of Petteruti history in that room is an...
Ted Rasch was one of only a handful of music retailers who began using the Internet for commerce as early as 1996. He was asked many times in those early years to explain the Internet and how it could possibly fit into the music industry. One of the advantages in using the Internet in the early...
Babe Simoni began working for the Fender Guitar Company in 1953. He was a teenager when George Fullerton hired him to work on the factory floor. Babe’s father had worked in the plant just the year before but had suffered a stroke and left the company. Babe worked on nearly every style of guitar the...
Ed Rizzuto was surrounded by music his entire life. As a young boy he started playing trombone, which he continued throughout high school and into his military service in the early 1950s. After teaching orchestra as a school band director for several years, Ed joined the music industry as a...
Tony Blair is the proud president of the Kay Musical Instrument Company, which has a long and important history in the music products industry. As Tony points out, many noted musicians today got their first start playing a Kay guitar. Over the years Tony added his passion for distribution and...