Women in the Music Industry
Vanetta Wilson was the fourth generation owner of her family’s music business. Chesbro Music began in 1911 as a music retailer and expanded over the years to become one of the largest music wholesalers in the country. Since taking on the Hoshino line of products in the 1970s, the company has...
Barbara Paulsen is one of the joyous and passionate people our industry is lucky to have in great numbers. Barb entered the music industry as the director of national and global sales for That Corp. in Massachusetts in 1986. Within ten years she would meet her husband and move to Illinois where...
Maxine Eastman-Jackson met her future husband, Bud, in school when they were 14 years old. The year they married, 1953, they moved to Provo, UT, where Bud worked at Modern Music by day and gave guitar lessons that Maxine would schedule, each night. In 1966 they moved to San Jose to operate the...
Joyce Porras was hired to work at Reynald’s Music Store for two weeks in 1946, to help with the Christmas holiday rush. She continued to work for the company until it was sold in the 1980s. In fact, she continued to work for Reynald’s even after it was sold because she and her husband are the...
Teresa Leithold began teaching music in 1956 and conducted her last lesson just ten days before she passed away at the age of 87 on February 13, 2019. Music was her passion! While her husband ran the family music store in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Mrs. Leithold created the music lesson program for the...
Abbie Leithold-Gerzema is the co-owner of Leithold Music in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Abbie and her brother also share management duties in the store that their great-grandfather established in 1888. Abbie graduated from Drake University with a music degree in Pipe Organ and Music Business. In the...
Evelyn Brue-Roeder opened her music store in 1940! Her main focus in the early days was music lessons, however she soon added sheet music, accessories and musical instruments. She developed a passion for steel guitars as she witnessed their development over her career. When the pedal steel guitar...
Lynn Kephart worked with her husband Russ to establish the Iowa-based Kephart Music Centers. Her attention to details was the perfect match for accounting, inventory and payroll in the pre-computer age. Her friends spanned the entire industry, retailers and suppliers alike, and she is often thought...
Michelle Moog-Koussa is the keeper of her father’s flame! As director of the Bob Moog Foundation she has worked closely with those who seek as she does to promote the work of her father, who was considered by many to be the premier pioneer of electronic music with the invention of his synthesizer,...
Helga Kasimoff and her husband established the Bluthner piano dealership in Pasadena, California in 1963. Since that time many Blüthner grand pianos have been restored in their workshop such as those owned by Jerome Kern (1922), Prince Esterharzy (1903), and King Johann of Saxony (1860). Helga and...