Business: Merchants of Music

For three long days last week in Chicago's Stevens Hotel drums boomed, pianos banged, guitars twanged, trumpets tootled, piccolos shrilled, saxophones squealed, kazoos squawked, tubas oomped. Assembled there were some 2,000 of the sobersided businessmen who supply U. S. music with everything except talent. Retailers gathered for the annual conventions of the National Association of Music Merchants, the National Retail Musical Instrument Dealers Association and the National Association of Sheet Music Dealers. Wholesalers appeared to curry favor with retailers, to attend the annual meeting of the National Association of Musical...