The NAMM Oral History Program is an

oral history Oral history is the collection and study of historical information from people, families, important events, or everyday life using audiotapes, videotapes, or transcriptions of planned interviews. These interviews are conducted with people who pa ...

project and archive of recordings of interviews with people from all aspects of the music products industry, including music instrument retailers,

musical instrument A musical instrument is a device created or adapted to make Music, musical sounds. In principle, any object that produces sound can be considered a musical instrument—it is through purpose that the object becomes a musical instrument. A person ...

and product creators, suppliers and sales representatives, music educators and advocates,

publishers Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

, live sound and recording pioneers, innovators, founders, and

musicians A musician is someone who Composer, composes, Conducting, conducts, or Performing arts#Performers, performs music. According to the United States Employment Service, "musician" is a general Terminology, term used to designate a person who fol ...

. Established in 2000 by NAMM: The International Music Products Association to preserve the history of the music products industry as well as improve

music education Music education is a field of practice in which educators are trained for careers as primary education, elementary or secondary education, secondary music teachers, school or music conservatory ensemble directors. Music education is also a rese ...

worldwide, the program includes over 5,000 audio or video interviews available to the public via online streaming.

Background

In 1996, NAMM established the NAMM Resource Center to preserve the history of the music products industry. In 2000 the Oral History Program was founded, with Dan Del Fiorentino, NAMM Music Historian and former curator of the NAMM Foundation's

Museum of Making Music The Museum of Making Music, is a signature program of the National Association of Music Merchants' NAMM Foundation, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization located in Carlsbad, California. The museum opened to the public on March 5, 2000. Its miss ...

as lead interviewer. The first NAMM Oral History interview, with professional harmonica player Bill Walden, was conducted on March 5, 2000 at the Museum of Making Music's opening day.

Purpose

The NAMM Oral History Program seeks to capture one-on-one interviews with those involved with the music products industry to document and preserve the evolution of musical instruments and music retail, and improve music education worldwide. Interview subjects include but are not limited to: music instrument designers, manufacturers, and retailers, composers, arrangers, and publishers, recording and live sound engineers, and musicians.

The collection

The collection includes interviews with people from over 80 countries and all 50 U.S. states, born between 1903 and 2001. Musical instrument pioneers and founders of companies that manufacture music products have been interviewed for the collection, including

Moog Music Moog Music Inc. ( ) is an American synthesizer company based in Asheville, North Carolina. It was founded in 1953 as R. A. Moog Co. by Robert Moog and his father and was renamed Moog Music in 1972. Its early instruments included the Moog sy ...

founder

Bob Moog Robert Arthur Moog ( ; May 23, 1934 – August 21, 2005) was an American engineer and electronic music pioneer. He was the founder of the synthesizer manufacturer Moog Music and the inventor of the first commercial synthesizer, the Moog synthe ...

Roland Roland (; ; or ''Rotholandus''; or ''Rolando''; died 15 August 778) was a Frankish military leader under Charlemagne who became one of the principal figures in the literary cycle known as the Matter of France. The historical Roland was mil ...

and

Boss Boss may refer to: Occupations * Supervisor, often referred to as boss * Air boss, more formally, air officer, the person in charge of aircraft operations on an aircraft carrier * Crime boss, the head of a criminal organization * Fire boss, ...

founder

Ikutaro Kakehashi , also known by the nickname Taro, was a Japanese engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur. He founded the musical instrument manufacturers Ace Tone, Roland Corporation and Boss Corporation, and the audiovisual electronics company ATV Corporation. ...

Korg , founded as Keio Electronic Laboratories, is a Japanese multinational corporation that manufactures electronic musical instrument An electronic musical instrument or electrophone is a musical instrument that produces sound using electr ...

co-founder Tsutomu Katoh,

Orange Orange most often refers to: *Orange (fruit), the fruit of the tree species '' Citrus'' × ''sinensis'' ** Orange blossom, its fragrant flower ** Orange juice *Orange (colour), the color of an orange fruit, occurs between red and yellow in the vi ...

founder Clifford Cooper, guitar innovator

Ted McCarty Theodore McCarty (October 10, 1909 – April 1, 2001) was an American businessman who worked with the Wurlitzer Company and the Gibson Guitar Corporation. In 1966, he and Gibson Vice President John Huis bought the Bigsby Electric Guitar Company. ...

Taylor Guitars Taylor Guitars is an American guitar manufacturer based in El Cajon, California. The company was founded in 1974 by Bob Taylor and Kurt Listug, specializing in acoustic guitars and semi-hollow electric guitars. It is one of the largest manufact ...

co-founder Bob Taylor,

Remo Remo Inc. is an American musical instruments manufacturing company based in Valencia, California, and founded by Remo Belli in 1957. Products manufactured include drum kits, drumheads, drums, and drum hardware, hardware, and various percussio ...

founder

Remo Belli Remo Delmo Belli (June 22, 1927 – April 25, 2016) was an American jazz drummer who developed and marketed the first successful synthetic drumheads and founded the Remo company. Biography Belli was born in Mishawaka, Indiana, and began drumming ...

Roger Linn Roger Curtis Linn is an American designer of electronic musical instruments and equipment. He is the designer of the LM-1, the first drum machine to use samples, and the MPC sampler, which had a major influence on the development of hip hop ...

Tom Oberheim Thomas Elroy Oberheim (born July 7, 1936), known as Tom Oberheim, is an American audio engineer and electronics engineer best known for designing effects processors, analog synthesizers, sequencers, and drum machines. He has been the founder ...

Ray Kurzweil Raymond Kurzweil ( ; born February 12, 1948) is an American computer scientist, author, entrepreneur, futurist, and inventor. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), speech synthesis, text-to-speech synthesis, spee ...

Henry E. Steinway Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg, anglicized name Henry Engelhard Steinway, (February 22, 1797 – February 7, 1871)B ...

Steinway & Sons Steinway & Sons, also known as Steinway (), is a German-American piano company, founded in 1853 in New York City by German piano builder Henry E. Steinway, Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg (later known as Henry E. Steinway). The company's growth le ...

Meyer Sound Laboratories Meyer Sound Laboratories is an American company based in Berkeley, California that manufactures self-powered loudspeakers, multichannel audio show control systems, electroacoustic architecture, and audio analysis tools for the professional sound ...

co-founder Helen Meyer, and Hirotaka Kawai, a key figure in the Kawai Musical Instruments Manufacturing Company. The collection's interviews also include factory workers and salespeople who worked for music product manufacturers or sold the products those companies produced. The collection includes interviews from Music product retailers, covering the history of such music store chains as

Guitar Center Guitar Center, Inc. is an American musical instrument retailer chain headquartered in Westlake Village, California. It operates 304 locations and is the largest company of its kind in the United States. The company oversees several subsidia ...

and Sam Ash, as well as independent music stores around the world such as Andertons Music Co. in England,

Daynes Music Daynes Music, located in Midvale, Utah, is the oldest retail business and continuously operated family business in Utah. It is the 76th oldest family-owned business in the country. What began as a small music and jewelry store in a log building i ...

in the U.S., and Tom Lee Music in Hong Kong. Other interviews include key figures in music product retailing, such as Henry Goldrich of

Manny's Music Manny's Music was an American Music store, music instrument store in New York City on Music Row (West 48th Street, between 6th and 7th Avenues), Midtown Manhattan, where musicians from beginner to professional could buy their instruments and meet e ...

and George Gruhn of Gruhn Guitars. Interviews with songwriters within the collection include interviews with

Songwriters Hall of Fame The Songwriters Hall of Fame (SHOF) is an American institution founded in 1969 by songwriter Johnny Mercer, music publisher/songwriter Abe Olman, and publisher/executive Howie Richmond to honor those whose work represent and maintain the heri ...

members

Allee Willis Alta Sherral "Allee" Willis (November 10, 1947 – December 24, 2019) was an American songwriter and art director. Willis co-wrote hit songs including "September" and " Boogie Wonderland" by Earth, Wind & Fire and " What Have I Done to Deserve T ...

and

Marilyn Bergman Alan Bergman (born September 11, 1925) and Marilyn Keith Bergman (née Katz; November 10, 1928 – January 8, 2022) were an American songwriting duo. Married from 1958 until Marilyn's death, together they wrote music and lyrics for numerous celeb ...

, and folk singer and songwriter

Pete Seeger Peter Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, and social activist. He was a fixture on nationwide radio in the 1940s and had a string of hit records in the early 1950s as a member of The Weav ...

. Composers interviewed for the collection include electronic music pioneer

Morton Subotnick Morton Subotnick (born April 14, 1933) is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his 1967 composition '' Silver Apples of the Moon'', the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch. He was one of the fo ...

and former

Yes Yes or YES may refer to: * An affirmative particle in the English language; see yes and no Education * YES Prep Public Schools, Houston, Texas, US * Young Eisner Scholars, in Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago, and Appalachia, US * Young Ep ...

guitarist and

film composer A film score is original music written specifically to accompany a film. The score comprises a number of orchestral, instrumental, or choral pieces called cues, which are timed to begin and end at specific points during the film in order to ...

Trevor Rabin Trevor Charles Rabin (; born ) is a South African musician, songwriter, and film composer. Born into a musical family and raised in Johannesburg, Rabin took up the piano and guitar at an early age and became a session musician, playing and produc ...

. A wide variety of musicians from different musical eras and genres are included in the collection, including recording pioneer

Les Paul Lester William Polsfuss (June 9, 1915 – August 12, 2009), known as Les Paul, was an American jazz guitarist, jazz, country guitarist, country, and blues guitarist, songwriter, luthier, and inventor. He was one of the pioneers of the solid body ...

, blues legend and

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (RRHOF), also simply referred to as the Rock Hall, is a museum and hall of fame located in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States, on the shore of Lake Erie. The museum documents the history of rock music and the ...

member

B.B. King Riley B. King (September 16, 1925 – May 14, 2015), known professionally as B.B. King, was an American blues guitarist, singer, songwriter, and record producer. He introduced a sophisticated style of soloing based on fluid string bending, sh ...

Country Music Hall of Fame The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum in Nashville, Tennessee, is one of the world's largest museums and research centers dedicated to the preservation and interpretation of American vernacular music. Chartered in 1964, the museum has amass ...

members

Emmylou Harris Emmylou Harris (born April 2, 1947) is an American singer, songwriter, musician, bandleader, and activist. She is considered one of the leading music artists behind the country rock genre in the 1970s and the Americana (music), Americana genre ...

and

Roy Clark Roy Linwood Clark (April 15, 1933 – November 15, 2018) was an American singer, musician, and television presenter. He is best known for having hosted '' Hee Haw'', a nationally televised country variety show, from 1969 to 1997. Clark wa ...

, rock musician

Lita Ford Lita Rossana Ford (born September 19, 1958) is an American guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. She was the lead guitarist for the all-female rock band the Runaways in the late 1970s, and then embarked on a successful glam metal solo career tha ...

Ike Turner Izear Luster "Ike" Turner Jr. (November 5, 1931 – December 12, 2007) was an American musician, bandleader, songwriter, record producer, and talent scout. An early pioneer of 1950s rock and roll, he is best known for his work in the 1960s and ...

, Steve Miller,

John Waite John Charles Waite (born 4 July 1952) is an English rock singer and musician. As a solo artist, he has released ten studio albums and is best known for the 1984 hit single "Missing You (John Waite song), Missing You", which reached No. 1 on th ...

, and

Jason Mraz Jason Thomas Mraz ( ; born June 23, 1977) is an American singer-songwriter and guitarist. He rose to prominence with the release of his debut studio album, ''Waiting for My Rocket to Come'' (2002), which spawned the single "The Remedy (I Won't Wo ...

. The collection also includes interviews with

Herbie Hancock Herbert Jeffrey Hancock (born April 12, 1940) is an American jazz musician, bandleader, and composer. He started his career with trumpeter Donald Byrd's group. Hancock soon joined the Miles Davis Quintet, where he helped to redefine the role of ...

Keith Emerson Keith Noel Emerson (2 November 194411 March 2016) was an English keyboardist, songwriter, composer and record producer. He played keyboards in a number of bands before finding his first commercial success with the Nice in the late 1960s. He be ...

Rick Wakeman Richard Christopher Wakeman (born 18 May 1949) is an English keyboardist and composer best known as a member of the progressive rock band Yes across five tenures between 1971 and 2004, and for his prolific solo career. AllMusic describes Wakema ...

, and 27-time

Grammy Award The Grammy Awards, stylized as GRAMMY, and often referred to as The Grammys, are awards presented by The Recording Academy of the United States to recognize outstanding achievements in music. They are regarded by many as the most prestigious ...

-winning artist

Chick Corea Armando Anthony "Chick" Corea (June 12, 1941 – February 9, 2021) was an American jazz pianist, composer, bandleader and occasional percussionist. His compositions "Spain (instrumental), Spain", "500 Miles High", "La Fiesta", "Armando's Rhumba" ...

, as well as

big band A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s and ...

leader and former

Glenn Miller Orchestra Glenn Miller and His Orchestra was an American swing dance band that was formed by Glenn Miller in 1938. Arranged around a clarinet and tenor saxophone playing melody, and three other saxophones playing harmony, the band became the most pop ...

member

Ray Anthony Ray Anthony (born Raymond Antonini; January 20, 1922) is an American retired bandleader, trumpeter, songwriter and actor. He is the last living member of the Glenn Miller Orchestra. Biography Anthony was born to an Italian family in Bentleyv ...

, jazz drummer

Joe Morello Joseph Albert Morello (July 17, 1928 – March 12, 2011) was an American jazz drummer best known for serving as the drummer for pianist Dave Brubeck, as part of the Dave Brubeck Quartet, from 1957 to 1972, including during the quartet's "clas ...

Elvis Presley Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977) was an American singer and actor. Referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one of the most significant cultural figures of the ...

guitarist

Scotty Moore Winfield Scott Moore III (December 27, 1931 – June 28, 2016) was an American guitarist who formed The Blue Moon Boys in 1954, Elvis Presley's backing band. He was studio and touring guitarist for Presley between 1954 and 1968. Rock critic ...

, Wrecking Crew Drummer

Hal Blaine Hal Blaine (born Harold Simon Belsky; February 5, 1929 – March 11, 2019) was an American drummer and session musician, thought to be among the most recorded studio drummers in the music industry, claiming over 35,000 sessions and 6,000 singles. ...

Sun Studio Sun Studio is a recording studio opened by rock-and-roll pioneer Sam Phillips at 706 Union Avenue in Memphis, Tennessee, on January 3, 1950. It was originally called Memphis Recording Service, sharing the same building with the Sun Records la ...

session drummer J. M. Van Eaton,

Johnny Cash John R. Cash (born J. R. Cash; February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003) was an American singer-songwriter. Most of his music contains themes of sorrow, moral tribulation, and redemption, especially songs from the later stages of his career. ...

and

Carl Perkins Carl Lee Perkins (April 9, 1932 – January 19, 1998)#nytimesobit, Pareles. was an American guitarist, singer and songwriter. A rockabilly great and pioneer of rock and roll, he began his recording career at the Sun Studio, in Memphis, Tennes ...

drummer W. S. Holland, guitarist

Brian Setzer Brian Robert Setzer (born April 10, 1959) is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He found widespread success in the early 1980s with the 1950s-style rockabilly group Stray Cats, and returned to the music scene in the early 1990s with ...

, percussionist and singer Sheila E., and

A. R. Rahman Allah Rakha Rahman (; born A. S. Dileep Kumar; 6 January 1967), also known by the initialism ARR, is an Indian music composer, record producer, singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and philanthropist known for his works in Indian cinem ...

. Interviews with pioneering hip-hop artists and DJs in the collection include

Afrika Bambaataa Lance Taylor (born April 17, 1957), also known as Afrika Bambaataa (), is a retired American DJ, rapper, and record producer. He is notable for releasing a series of genre-defining electro tracks in the 1980s that influenced the development of ...

Grand Wizzard Theodore Theodore Livingston (born March 5, 1963), better known as Grand Wizzard Theodore, is an American musician and DJ. He is widely credited as the inventor of the scratching technique. In addition to scratching, he gained credibility for his mastery ...

DJ Jazzy Joyce Joyce Lynn Spencer, also known as DJ Jazzy Joyce (born June 20, 1967) is an American hip hop DJ from Bronx, New York DJ Jazzy Joyce at allmusic.com/ref> and a producer on New York City's radio station Hot 97. She has been considered one of the m ...

Grandmaster Caz Curtis Brown (born April 18, 1960), better known by the stage names Grandmaster Caz and Casanova Fly, is an American rapper, songwriter, and DJ. He was a member of the hip hop group The Cold Crush Brothers from 1979 to the mid-1980s. He is best k ...

, and

Jazzy Jay John Byas (born November 18, 1961), also known as The Original Jazzy Jay or DJ Jazzy Jay, is an American hip hop Turntablism, DJ and producer. Background Jazzy Jay was born into a Gullah family in coastal South Carolina. He moved with his famil ...

. Over the years the scope of the collection has expanded to include

audio engineers An audio engineer (also known as a sound engineer or recording engineer) helps to produce a recording or a live performance, balancing and adjusting sound sources using equalization, dynamics processing and audio effects, mixing, reproduc ...

such as ''

Grand Ole Opry The ''Grand Ole Opry'' is a regular live country music, country-music Radio broadcasting, radio broadcast originating from Nashville, Tennessee, Nashville, Tennessee, on WSM (AM), WSM, held between two and five nights per week, depending on the ...

'' engineer Kevin McGinty, SoundGirls executive director

Karrie Keyes Karrie Keyes is an American audio engineer and the executive director of SoundGirls, a non-profit organization that supports women in the sound industry. She has been the monitor engineer for Pearl Jam and Eddie Vedder for over 25 years and has ...

, and the "Father of Festival Sound" Bill Hanley, as well as pro audio pioneers such as

Al Schmitt Albert Harry Schmitt (April 17, 1930 – April 26, 2021) was an American recording engineer and record producer. He won twenty Grammy Awards for his work with Henry Mancini, Steely Dan, George Benson, Toto (band), Toto, Natalie Cole, Quincy Jone ...

and

George Massenburg George Y. Massenburg (born Baltimore, Maryland c. 1947) is a Grammy award-winning recording engineer and inventor. Working principally in Baltimore, Los Angeles, Nashville, and Macon, Georgia, Massenburg is widely known for submitting a paper t ...

, whose involvement with professional audio equipment and recording studios has helped the industry grow. Additionally the collection contains interviews with such

producers Producer(s), The Producer(s), or co-producer(s) may refer to: Occupations *Producer (agriculture), a farm operator *Producer, a stakeholder of economic production * Film producer, supervises the making of films **Executive producer, contributes t ...

Quincy Jones Quincy Delight Jones Jr. (March 14, 1933 – November 3, 2024) was an American record producer, composer, arranger, conductor, trumpeter, and bandleader. Over the course of his seven-decade career, he received List of awards and nominations re ...

Matt Ross-Spang Matt Ross-Spang is an American Grammy award winning record producer, engineer, and mixer. His credits include such artists as Jason Isbell, Margo Price, Al Green, John Prine and Elvis Presley. Life and career Matt Ross-Spang, born in Memphis, ...

, and

Stax Records Stax Records is an American record company, originally based in Memphis, Tennessee. Founded in 1957 as Satellite Records, the label changed its name to Stax Records in September 1961. It also shared its operations with sister label Volt Records. ...

executive Al Bell.

Music History Project podcast

In 2017, NAMM launched the ''Music History Project'' podcast covering interviews and topics from the NAMM Oral History program.

The NAMM Oral History Service Award

The NAMM Oral History Service Award was established in 2011 and recognizes the major contributions of those who have been interviewed themselves and who have strongly supported the program by providing historical context and suggesting others to be included. The award is presented at the

NAMM Show The NAMM Show is an annual trade show in the United States organized by the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM), which describes it as "the industry’s largest stage, uniting the global music, sound and entertainment technology commun ...

each year by the NAMM CEO and the NAMM Music Historian. The list of winners is as follows: *2011: George Gruhn *2012: Keith Mardak *2013: Dennis Houlihan *2014: Jim Funada *2015: Madeline Crouch *2016: Ernie Lansford *2017: Craig Smith *2018: Bernie Capicchiano *2019: Harold "Hap" Kuffner *2020: Robert Wilson MBE *2021: Gerhard Meinl *2022: Larry Morton *2023:

Lenise Bent Lenise Diane Bent is an American audio engineer who has worked in both the music and film industry. She was one of a handful of women working in the Hollywood recording studio business in a technical role during the 1970s, and was the first woma ...

*2024: Jeri Palumbo and Erik Zobler

References

External links

*{{Official website, https://www.namm.org/library/oral-history 2000 establishments in the United States Oral history Music history Music archives in the United States