Pianos
Karen Cuneo-Ramirez played piano since she was a girl and as she grew up, she began to teach piano. She was hired by Sherman Clay in Stockton, California, to teach piano after buying an organ from the store just a week before. Karen worked closely with the Conn Organ Company, taking their sales...
Ed Hendricks always enjoyed selling. After serving heroically in World War II, he worked in several Chicago-area department stores before being hired by Don Broman to work for Lyon & Healy’s retail store. In the early 1970s he decided to open his own piano store, which is located in Downers...
Theo Boylan grew up in a small town 80 miles from Chicago and has a musical performance background in both piano and oboe. As a small child, she began her love of classical music at the piano, which, over the years became a career when she was hired by Thoroughbred Music in Clearwater. During the...
Arnold Poppenberg was hired by the Winter Piano Company as a traveling salesman in 1959, the same year he attended his first NAMM Show. He remained with Winter for ten years, but went on to rep for several other piano companies in the industry making him one of the most successful piano travelers...
Ken Edgington has many friends in the music industry, several of whom suggested he be included in the NAMM Oral History program, but when approached Ken was rather humble about his role in the music business, “are you sure you have the right guy?” Ken worked for the Baldwin Piano Company in Ohio...
Paul Murphy has served his industry well, just as did his father, his grandfather and his great-grandfather. Paul was elected to the NAMM Board of Directors where he served for over a decade including a term as chairman. Two of his relatives also served as president of the NAMM Board, as well as...
Dennis Guillaume began his career in the music industry in piano retail in the late 70's, a position he feels very much assisted him when he worked for Kimball Pianos throughout the 1980's. During this time the piano industry was experiencing steady decline. In an effort to reverse the trends,...
Jim Funada has proudly served the music products industry in several important ways over the last 40 years. He began his career by working for the Yamaha Corp. in keyboard retailing. Beginning in the late 1960s, Jim oversaw the Yamaha school programs among keyboard dealers in the San Francisco Bay...
David Tarpley remembered crawling around in the ceiling of his current church as a child, hauling the wires for the Allen Organ his father and uncle were installing. As a member of the Tarpley family, you worked in the family business, which for David meant sweeping the music store, moving pianos...
Bill Tarpley remembered the stories his father used to tell him about the early days of the family music retail store in west Texas. Times were hard during the era of the dust bowls and depression, but he credits his father’s skills as both a businessman and salesman in the success of the store....