Women in the Music Industry
Dee Vinton was known as Dancin’ Dee around the NAMM Foundation’s Museum of Making Music where she was a noted docent since the early 2000’s. Dee was fond of telling her tour groups that her mother was a dime-a-dance girl in the heyday of the 1920’s dance craze. After retiring from a successful...
Jane Traum and her husband Happy, are the founders of Homespun Music, which for decades has offered a growing collection of musical instrument training classes. Happy began with a new classical guitar program, which at the time was released on cassette tape. Today the expanded programs are offered...
Ann Jones was interviewed alongside Dick Dolan, the president of QRS, a company known around the world for their piano rolls. As CFO, Ann has been with QRS since the 1980s. She has played an important roll in the expansion of QRS into DVD products for a new generation of player pianos. Under Dick...
Ursula Seiler is president of the piano company formed by her late husband’s family. The Seiler Piano Company of Kitzinger, Germany has an extensive history of producing well-respected and innovative products. The family traditions continue within the company with Ursula’s daughter, Manuella,...
Helene La Faro has been asked countless times to recount the short but extremely influential musical career of her brother, jazz bassist Scott La Faro. In fact, she began collecting the notes of her many responses and compiled them into a book on Scott’s life. Nearly all jazz bass players can...
Eileen Kilday and her husband worked hard to re-build an old piano bench making company, which they renamed GRK. This project for the Kilday’s began in 1988 with the purchase of the old company and since that time both have been regular exhibitors at the NAMM Show as well as at other industry...
Kay Koster was a pioneering woman retail owner, who not only successfully ran a business on her own beginning in 1940, she also personally repaired guitars and amps of all makes and models for decades – even after she closed her retail store. Koster Guitar Center in Rockford, IL was primarily a...
Marilea Zajec and her husband Victor became the historians for the Midwest Band Clinic and over the years collected and wrote of the importance of the annual events impact on music education around the world. Victor attended the first program in 1946 and Marilea’s first Midwest was as a performer...
Wanda Jackson has been performing as an entertainer and singer worldwide for over 50 years. Known affectionately as the “Queen of Rockabilly”, she began her career as a teenage country singer with her own radio show in Oklahoma City and was “discovered” by legendary country singer Hank Thompson who...
Rose Wernes Drake traveled with her husband, Ivor, when he became the second salesperson hired for the Winter Piano Company following World War II. He often said the company got two for the price of one as she soon became as good an asset to the company as he was. It was Ivor’s idea to train her on...