The Baldwin Piano Company is an American
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...
brand. It was once the largest US-based manufacturer of
keyboard instrument
A keyboard instrument is a musical instrument played using a keyboard, a row of levers which are pressed by the fingers. The most common of these are the piano, organ, and various electronic keyboards, including synthesizers and digital p ...
s and known by the slogan, "America's Favorite Piano". Since 2001, it has been a
subsidiary of
Gibson Brands, Inc.
Gibson may refer to:
People
* Gibson (surname)
Businesses
* Gibson Brands, Inc., an American manufacturer of guitars, other musical instruments, and audio equipment
* Gibson Technology, and English automotive and motorsport company based
* Gi ...
It ceased most domestic production in December 2008, moving its total production to China.
History
![Baldwin Company 1904](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d3/Baldwin_Company_1904.jpg)
The company traces its origins back to 1857, when
Dwight Hamilton Baldwin
Dwight Hamilton Baldwin (September 15, 1821 – August 23, 1899) was a piano manufacturer in the United States, famous as the eponym and introducer of the Baldwin Piano.
Born in Erie County, Pennsylvania, Baldwin began his career as a teacher of ...
began teaching piano, organ, and violin in
Cincinnati
Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...
,
Ohio
Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...
. In 1862, Baldwin started a
Decker Brothers
Decker Brothers was an American piano manufacturer located in the John H. Edelmann designed Decker Building in New York, New York, on the national register of historic places. The company began to produce pianos in 1865, created by David Decker ...
piano dealership and, in 1866, hired Lucien Wulsin as a clerk. Wulsin became a partner in the dealership, by then known as D.H. Baldwin & Company, in 1873, and, under his leadership, the Baldwin Company became the largest piano dealer in the
Midwestern United States
The Midwestern United States, also referred to as the Midwest or the American Midwest, is one of four census regions of the United States Census Bureau (also known as "Region 2"). It occupies the northern central part of the United States. I ...
by the 1890s.
In 1889–1890, Baldwin vowed to build "the best piano that could be built"
and subsequently formed two production companies: Hamilton Organ, which built reed organs, and the Baldwin Piano Company, which made pianos. The company's first piano, an upright, began selling in 1891. The company introduced its first grand piano in 1895.
![Baldwin Hamilton de 1968](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f1/Baldwin_Hamilton_de_1968.jpg)
Baldwin died in 1899 and left the vast majority of his estate to fund missionary causes. Wulsin ultimately purchased Baldwin's estate and continued the company's shift from retail to manufacturing. The company won its first major award in 1900, when their model 112 won the Grand Prix at the
Exposition Universelle in Paris, the first American manufactured piano to win such an award. Baldwin-manufactured pianos also won top awards at the
Louisiana Purchase Exposition and the 1914 Anglo-American Exposition. By 1913, business had become brisk, with Baldwin exporting to thirty-two countries in addition to having retailers throughout the United States.
Baldwin, like many other manufacturers, began building
player piano
A player piano (also known as a pianola) is a self-playing piano containing a pneumatic or electro-mechanical mechanism, that operates the piano action via programmed music recorded on perforated paper or metallic rolls, with more modern im ...
s in the 1920s. A piano factory was constructed in
Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wi ...
. The models became unpopular by the end of the 1920s, which, coupled with the beginning of the
Great Depression, could have spelled disaster for Baldwin. However, the company's president, Lucien Wulsin II, had created a large reserve fund for such situations, and Baldwin was able to ride out the market downturn.
During
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...
, the US War Production Board ordered the cessation of all US piano manufacturing so that the factories could be used for the US war effort. Baldwin factories were used to manufacture plywood airplane components for various aircraft such as the
Aeronca PT-23 trainer and the stillborn Curtiss-Wright
C-76 Caravan cargo aircraft. While the employment of wood components in military aircraft could by no means be considered a resounding success, lessons learned in constructing plywood aircraft wings ultimately assisted in Baldwin's development of its 21-ply maple pinblock design used in its postwar piano models.
After the war ended, Baldwin resumed selling pianos, and by 1953 the company had doubled production figures from prewar levels. In 1946, Baldwin introduced its first
electronic organ
An electric organ, also known as electronic organ, is an electronic keyboard instrument which was derived from the harmonium, pipe organ and theatre organ. Originally designed to imitate their sound, or orchestral sounds, it has since developed ...
(developed in 1941),
which became so successful that the company changed its name to the Baldwin Piano & Organ Company. In 1961,
Lucien Wulsin III became president. By 1963, the company had acquired
C. Bechstein Pianofortefabrik and remained its owner until 1986. In 1959, Baldwin constructed a new piano manufacturing plant in
Conway, Arkansas, originally to manufacture upright pianos: by 1973, the company had built 1,000,000 upright pianos. In 1961 Baldwin constructed a new piano factory in
Greenwood, Mississippi
Greenwood is a city in and the county seat of Leflore County, Mississippi, United States, located at the eastern edge of the Mississippi Delta region, approximately 96 miles north of the state capital, Jackson, and 130 miles south of the riverp ...
. Subsequently production of upright pianos was moved from Cincinnati, Ohio to Greenwood.
The company next attempted to capitalize on the growth of
pop music
Pop music is a genre of popular music that originated in its modern form during the mid-1950s in the United States and the United Kingdom. The terms ''popular music'' and ''pop music'' are often used interchangeably, although the former descri ...
. After an unsuccessful bid to buy
Fender Musical Instruments Corporation, Baldwin bought
Burns of London in 1965 for $380,000, and began selling the guitars through the company's piano retail outlets. During this time period, Baldwin engineer Robert C. Scherer developed the Prismatone pickup for nylon string guitars.
Unaccustomed to marketing guitars, the Baldwin stores failed to interest many guitar buyers, and sales proved disappointing.
In 1967, Baldwin also bought
Gretsch
Gretsch is an American company that manufactures musical instruments. The company was founded in 1883 in Brooklyn, New York by Friedrich Gretsch, a 27-year-old German immigrant, shortly after his arrival to the United States. Friedrich Gretsch ...
guitars, which had its own experienced guitar sales force and a distribution network of authorized retail outlets. However, Fender and Gibson continued to dominate, and sales did not reach expected levels. The Gretsch guitar operation was sold back to the Gretsch family in 1989.
Throughout the 1970s, the company undertook a significant bid to diversify into financial services. Under the leadership of Morley P. Thompson, Baldwin bought dozens of firms and by the early 1980s owned over 200 savings and loan institutions, insurance companies and investment firms, including
MGIC Investment Corporation. The company changed its name to Baldwin-United in 1977 after a merger with United Corp. In 1980, the company opened a new piano manufacturing facility in
Trumann,
Arkansas
Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the O ...
.
[KAIT8 News, Jan. 7, 2005]
"Trumann Piano Plant Lays Off Workers While Undergoing Restructuring"
, By 1982, however, the piano business contributed only three percent of Baldwin's $3.6 billion revenues. Meanwhile, the company had taken on significant debt to finance its acquisitions and new facilities, and was finding it increasingly difficult to meet its loan obligations. In 1983, the holding company and several of its subsidiaries were forced into bankruptcy with a total debt of over $9 billion—at that time, the largest bankruptcy ever. However, the piano business was not part of the bankruptcy.
During bankruptcy proceedings in 1984, the Baldwin piano business was sold to its management.
The new company went public in 1986 as the Baldwin Piano and Organ Company
and moved its headquarters to
Loveland, Ohio
Loveland is a city in Hamilton, Clermont, and Warren counties in the southwestern part of the U.S. state of Ohio. Considered part of the Greater Cincinnati area, Loveland is located near exit 52 off Interstate 275, about northeast of the Cin ...
.
However, difficulties continued as demographic changes and foreign competition slowed sales of keyboard instruments. The company responded by acquiring
Wurlitzer
The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, usually referred to as simply Wurlitzer, is an American company started in Cincinnati in 1853 by German immigrant (Franz) Rudolph Wurlitzer. The company initially imported stringed, woodwind and brass instruments ...
to increase market share and by moving manufacturing overseas to reduce production costs.
In 1998, the company moved its headquarters from Loveland to nearby
Deerfield Township.
Throughout the 1990s, the company's fortunes improved, and by 1998, the company's 270 employees at its
Conway, Arkansas facility were building 2,200 grand pianos a year. However, in 2001, Baldwin was again facing difficulties, and filed for bankruptcy once again, when the company was bought by
Gibson Guitar Corporation.
In 2005, the company laid off some workers from its Trumann, Arkansas manufacturing plant while undergoing restructuring.
As a subsidiary of Gibson Guitar Corporation, the company has manufactured instruments under the Baldwin,
Chickering Chickering may refer to:
* Chickering, Suffolk, a place in Suffolk, England
* Chickering & Sons, the piano company that was created by Jonas Chickering
* Arthur M. Chickering, an arachnologist
* Arthur W. Chickering, a researcher of student devel ...
, Wurlitzer, Hamilton, and Howard names. Baldwin bought two piano factories in China in which they manufacture grand and vertical pianos. Models built in the factory in
Zhongshan
Zhongshan (; ) is a prefecture-level city in the south of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong province, China. As of the 2020 census, the whole city with 4,418,060 inhabitants is now part of the Guangzhou–Shenzhen conurbation with 65,565,622 ...
, China include the Baldwin Hamilton studio models B243 and B247, which are the most popular school pianos ever built.
The much larger factory in Dongbei is not building pianos at this time. Baldwin grand pianos are being built to Baldwin specification by Parsons Music, China. All new pianos are being sold under the Baldwin name and not Wurlitzer, Hamilton or Chickering.
Baldwin stopped manufacturing new pianos at its
Trumann, Arkansas, factory in December 2008. They retained a small staff to build custom grands and to finish numerous artist grands, however the factory in Trumann, AR was later closed and remaining inventory disposed of.
Since 2008, Baldwin has not produced pianos in the United States.
Models
Grand pianos
Current Grand Piano Models:
* BP 148: 4'10" (148 cm)
* BP 152: 5'0" (152 cm)
* BP 165: 5'5" (165 cm)
* BP 178: 5'10" (178 cm)
* BP 190: 6'3" (190 cm)
* BP 211: 6'11" (211 cm)
Upright pianos
Current Upright Piano Models:
* B342/B42 Acrosonic: 43 ½" (110 cm)
* B442/B42 Acrosonic: 43 ½" (110 cm)
* B243/B47 Hamilton: 47" (119 cm)
* B252 Concert Vertical: 52" (132 cm)
* BP1
* BPE1
* BP3
* BP3T
* BP5
* BP-X5
Notable performers
![Amy Lee 2011 Evanescence concert 10-25-11](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/98/Amy_Lee_2011_Evanescence_concert_10-25-11.jpg)
Many distinguished musicians have chosen to compose, perform and record using Baldwin pianos, including the pianists
Walter Gieseking
Walter Wilhelm Gieseking (5 November 1895 – 26 October 1956) was a French-born German pianist and composer. Gieseking was renowned for his subtle touch, pedaling, and dynamic control—particularly in the music of Debussy and Ravel; he made int ...
,
Claudio Arrau
Claudio Arrau León (; February 6, 1903June 9, 1991) was a Chilean pianist known for his interpretations of a vast repertoire spanning the baroque to 20th-century composers, especially Bach, Beethoven, Schubert, Chopin, Schumann, Liszt and B ...
,
Mike Shinoda
Michael Kenji Shinoda (; ja, 篠田 賢治, Shinoda Kenji; born February 11, 1977) is an American musician, singer, rapper, songwriter and record producer. He co-founded the rock band Linkin Park in 1996 and was the band's collaborative vocal ...
,
Jorge Bolet,
Morton Estrin
Morton Estrin (December 29, 1923 – December 7, 2017) was an American classical pianist and teacher.
His career began in 1949 with a well-received recital at Town Hall in New York. He studied with the teacher Vera Maurina-Press and others.
Es ...
,
Margaret Baxtresser (née Barthel),
Earl Wild
Earl Wild (November 26, 1915January 23, 2010) was an American pianist known for his transcriptions of jazz and classical music.
Biography
Royland Earl Wild was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1915. Wild was a musically precocious child and ...
and
José Iturbi
José Iturbi Báguena (28 November 189528 June 1980) was a Spanish conductor, pianist and harpsichordist. He appeared in several Hollywood films of the 1940s, notably playing himself in the musicals ''Thousands Cheer'' (1943), ''Music for Mill ...
and the composers
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland (, ; November 14, 1900December 2, 1990) was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later a conductor of his own and other American music. Copland was referred to by his peers and critics as "the Dean of American Com ...
,
Philip Glass,
Igor Stravinsky,
Béla Bartók,
Stephen Sondheim,
Leonard Bernstein,
Lukas Foss
Lukas Foss (August 15, 1922 – February 1, 2009) was a German-American composer, pianist, and conductor.
Career
Born Lukas Fuchs in Berlin, Germany in 1922, Foss was soon recognized as a child prodigy. He began piano and theory lessons with J ...
,
André Previn, and
John Williams. Baldwin pianos have been used by popular entertainers including
Ray Charles
Ray Charles Robinson Sr. (September 23, 1930 – June 10, 2004) was an American singer, songwriter, and pianist. He is regarded as one of the most iconic and influential singers in history, and was often referred to by contemporaries as "The Ge ...
,
Liberace
Władziu Valentino Liberace (May 16, 1919 – February 4, 1987) was an American pianist, singer, and actor. A child prodigy born in Wisconsin to parents of Italian and Polish origin, he enjoyed a career spanning four decades of concerts, recordi ...
,
Richard Carpenter,
Michael Feinstein
Michael Jay Feinstein (born September 7, 1956) is an American singer, pianist, and music revivalist. He is an archivist and interpreter for the repertoire known as the Great American Songbook. In 1988 he won a Drama Desk Special Award for cele ...
,
Ben Folds,
Billy Joel,
Cat Stevens, and
Carly Simon, and jazz pianists
Dave Brubeck,
George Shearing
Sir George Albert Shearing, (13 August 1919 14 February 2011) was a British jazz pianist who for many years led a popular jazz group that recorded for Discovery Records, MGM Records and Capitol Records. Shearing was the composer of over 300 ...
and
Dick Hyman.
Amy Lee
Amy Lynn Hartzler (; born December 13, 1981) is an American singer-songwriter and musician. She is the co-founder, lead vocalist, and lead songwriter of the rock band Evanescence. Alongside her contributions with the band, Lee has also particip ...
, the lead vocalist, pianist and keyboardist of
Evanescence
Evanescence is an American rock band founded in Little Rock, Arkansas in 1995 by singer and musician Amy Lee and guitarist Ben Moody. After recording independent EPs as a duo in the late 90's, and a demo CD, Evanescence released their debut ...
also uses this brand in most of her compositions, recordings and live performances. A Baldwin piano was seen nightly being played by
Paul Shaffer
Paul Allen Wood Shaffer (born November 28, 1949) is a Canadian singer, composer, actor, author, comedian, and multi-instrumentalist who served as David Letterman's musical director, band leader, and sidekick on the entire run of both ''Late Ni ...
on the ''
Late Show with David Letterman''. Baldwin was the official piano of the television show ''
Glee
Glee means delight, a form of happiness.
Glee may also refer to:
* Glee (music), a type of English choral music
* ''Glee'' (TV series), an American musical comedy-drama TV series, and related media created by Ryan Murphy
* ''Glee'' (Bran Van 30 ...
''.
Marian McPartland
Margaret Marian McPartland OBE ( Turner;Hasson, Claire"Marian McPartland: Jazz Pianist: An Overview of a Career" PhD Thesis. Retrieved 12 August 2008. 20 March 1918 – 20 August 2013), was an English–American jazz pianist, composer, and wri ...
's long-running radio show ''Piano Jazz'' was hosted by Baldwin.
Baldwin was second only to
Steinway
Steinway & Sons, also known as Steinway (), is a German-American piano company, founded in 1853 in Manhattan by German piano builder Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg (later known as Henry E. Steinway). The company's growth led to the opening of a ...
in its artist and symphony roster.
Bibliography
* Crombie, David. ''Piano: Evolution, Design, and Performance.'' Barnes and Noble, 2000. First printed by Balafon Books, Great Britain, 1995. ()
Baldwin Piano & Organ Company''Encyclopedia of Company Histories.'' Answers.com. Accessed March 1, 2007.
References
External links
Official websiteMorley Thompson InterviewNAMM Oral History Library (2003)
Lucien Wulsin InterviewNAMM Oral History Library (2005)
{{Authority control
Piano manufacturing companies of the United States
American brands
Companies based in Loveland, Ohio
Gibson Guitar Corporation
Music instrument endorsement lists
Music of Cincinnati
Manufacturing companies based in Ohio
American companies established in 1857
Manufacturing companies established in 1857
1857 establishments in Ohio
2001 mergers and acquisitions
Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018