Women in the Music Industry
Arlette Day and her husband, John, formed Day Murray Music in 1946. The name comes from the young couple’s last name and their hometown of Murray, Utah. They worked closely together and struggled in the years following World War II but persevered based on their commitment to each other, their...
Susan Beacock walked into a shopping mall with her music director husband in 1978 and noticed a small empty shop. He suggested they open a music store with a focus on teaching studios. Susan, without any discussion, agreed. With years of hard work and the challenges of strong competition, the...
Ruby Beeston was a piano teacher when she suggested that a local piano store carry sheet music. The store offered her space to sell the materials, which led to her opening a small chain of retail shops in the Salt Lake City, UT area. In searching for a store name she and her husband thought about...
Rosanne Day has enjoyed working alongside her husband, Klint, as owners of Day Murray Music, a mostly print music retail store in Utah. Her husband’s parents established the first of their three stores in the years following World War II. Since her involvement years later, Rosanne has been in...
Sheryl Laukat is passionate about the saxophone and the company she formed with her husband back in 1996. Tevis and Sheryl Laukat had the idea of creating a saxophone with acoustics that could be adjusted and modified even after the instrument was created. Their ideas and innovation led to the...
Grace Marquette doesn’t care much for vacations or trips because it takes her away from what she loves, her music store. Grace and her late husband, Robert, purchased the Loser’s Music Store, which was originally opened in 1923 on Cumberland Street in Lebanon, Pennsylvania, in 1954. The location...
Marge Levin was the secret behind the great success of Chuck Levin’s Washington Music Center in Maryland, a fact Mr. Levin was proud to admit. Marge was born in Washington DC and met Chuck, then a young pawnshop owner, while she was on a date with another man. Within a short time they realized they...
Nancy Higgins and her husband opened a small music shop in 1965. It was a very good year to start. The Beatles had invaded the United States and nearly every child you met wanted to play music. Bill Higgins Music, outside Baltimore, Maryland, grew over the years and Nancy worked every aspect of the...
Edith De Forest was associated with the Pratt-Read Company for over 70 years! She began working for the piano keys and action manufacturer in the early 1930s. Even after her retirement in the 1980s, she continued to work for the company’s museum. She later served as the company historian doing all...
Bunny Kacher began volunteering at the NAMM Foundation’s Museum of Making Music in 2002 as part of the second docent training class (the museum opened in 2000). Her love of music is easy to detect when taking one of her tours at the museum and, in fact, that love of music goes back to her days as a...