Women in the Music Industry
K. Ethel Merker was asked by the Holton Company to create the now popular Merker French horn. Her career has included acclaimed symphonic performances, radio and TV jingle work, and several well-known music education programs over the years. Her list of accomplishments is even made more impressive...
Jeannie Cheatham played roots music before anyone was calling it that. She grew up on church music, and progressed to the blues in a time and place where black women were encouraged to express their emotions through music. Jeannie was there when rhythm and blues became popular and played her own...
Carol Kaye can be heard on such landmark recordings as “La Bamba,” the Mission Impossible theme, and scores of hits produced by Phil Spector. She started playing jazz guitar in a big band during the early 1950s. Within the decade, she gained employment at the studio where she would later meet...
Kay McDowell now (and may always) holds the record for the most NAMM shows attended --83 in a row! As a very young girl, she accompanied her father, the owner of Ludwig Aeolian of St. Louis, Missouri, to the show. Years later, her husband, Bob, took over that business and a very active role in the...
Luella Derwin was one of the first women owners of a music store in America. In 1937, when her bandleader husband Hal Derwin went on the road, Luella was left behind, “So one day I was thinking of all the fun we had with musicians who would come to town and look for a local place to have their...
Vicki Pedrini grew up in the family’s music retail store in Southern California. She worked in the store on weekends and summer vacations as well as the holiday season, which brought fun times when the family all worked together. The store had a strong band and orchestra department, as it was...
This audio only interview was conducted for a radio program by Dan Del Fiorentino and donated to the NAMM Oral History program: Marian McPartland was a jazz pianist who helped elevate the scope of a series of jazz radio shows called Piano Jazz, which ran on PBS from 1978 until 2011. Marian began...
This audio only interview was conducted for a radio program by Dan Del Fiorentino and donated to the NAMM Oral History program: Patti Page was the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner who broke out from the role as a band singer during the swing era to create a very successful solo career,...
This audio only interview was conducted for a radio program by Dan Del Fiorentino and donated to the NAMM Oral History program: Georgia Gibbs, often billed as “Her Nibbs,” enjoyed a successful career as a singer with the big bands beginning in 1936. Over the years she performed with Tommy Dorsey,...
This audio only interview was conducted for a radio program by Dan Del Fiorentino and donated to the NAMM Oral History program: Ella Mae Morse was a vocalist for Jimmy Dorsey's Orchestra when she was just 14 years old. She went on to sing with Freddie Slack with whom she recorded a string of hits...