AADL Talks To: Jim King, Musician & Owner of King's Keyboard House

Thu, 06/26/2025 - 1:56pm

When: November 7, 2024

Jim King is the owner of King's Keyboard House, which was established in 1961 by his father, Richard. Jim grew up surrounded by music, which led to him performing at iconic venues including Bimbo's On The Hill and The Second Chance with his bands. He shares stories of maintaining a longstanding local business and the legendary performers they've supplied. 

Transcript

• [00:00:09] AMY CANTU: Hi, I'm Amy.
• [00:00:10] KATRINA ANBENDER: I'm Katrina. In this episode, AADL talks to Jim King. His father, Richard, founded King's Keyboard House, and the ownership passed to Jim in 2006. Jim tells us about the bands he has been a part of, venues he performed at around town, and shares stories of maintaining a longstanding local business. Thank you so much for joining us today, Jim. You were raised in the Ann Arbor area. Can you tell us a bit about your early life here and your family?
• [00:00:41] JIM KING: I was born at St. Joseph Hospital and at St. Joseph Hospital, I believe is now the University of Michigan School of Nursing. That's on Ingalls. I was born on the eighth floor. That was brand new in 1954, so I just gave away my age. My mother was born in that hospital. She was born on the fourth floor. They hadn't built the modern St. Joe Hospital, then. My son was born in the St. Joseph Hospital that now exists. It's Trinity now, so that's three buildings and or I should say, three floors. I was born in that hospital, and I lived in Ypsilanti, Michigan, right on Washtenaw Avenue. It's a yellow stucco English Tudor house. It was pretty cool. It's right on the corner of Washtenaw and Roosevelt, but that house had some interesting things in it. One of them, I was just talking about this yesterday, so that's fresh in my mind. They had a balcony in one of the bedrooms. The bedroom that my brother and I, who's one year younger than me, we shared that room. By the time we were six or seven, we started to get in some serious trouble because of the balcony an open door to outside, and nobody knew it. We could sneak out of the house pretty easily. But one of the things that I was telling my sister this, for some reason, we had these big giant life preservers and they were in the basement. Nobody ever used them. My brother and I got them out, and we thought, this is cool it'll protect us if we fall. We got on the balcony thing and just started jumping out and landing on our backs because that's where the padding was. My grandmother's washing dishes, and she sees these bodies flying by the window. She had a fit, but that was one of the interesting things. There was always a piano in our house. My dad managed a Grinnell's store in downtown Ypsilanti. Grinnell's was the largest music retailer at the time. They had stores everywhere. If you can imagine a music store that sold pianos and organs and keyboards and guitars, amps, drums, all that stuff in Saline, Michigan. In Dexter, in Chelsea, and Ypsilanti. They were everywhere. That's why they were so big. They must have had some deal with the Wrigley corporation because they would always rent these buildings that were owned by Wrigley's. They were all over Ypsilanti all over Ann Arbor. Not so much anymore. So, he managed that for 10 years 1951-1961. Then he started his own store, and his own store was called King's Keyboard House, still exists. That was on Liberty just west of where the afternoon delight is just west of Fifth Avenue. We were there for eight years, then moved to right next to the Real Seafood Company. We were there for eight years, then moved to right next to - we shared an alley with Kilwins Chocolate. I put on 30 pounds when we were there, but that was for 20 years. Then we moved to what is now called Dreammakers on Stadium Boulevard. We were there 1996-2006. I think, no, it's 2008, so 12 years. Then we moved to where we are now. We've been there since 2008. I was always in the music business. I was fascinated with music. We always had a piano in the house. I had a guitar when I was 9-years-old. My dad bought it for me. Actually, he rented it. After three months, the rent was over. I had to return the guitar. I cried my eyes out. I got another one, but I was fascinated with piano, especially Blues piano. I don't know why I liked it so much, but I did. I was playing around with that, and then I saw the Beatles on the Ed Sullivan show on February 9, I think it was in 1964, and that was it. It was it for a lot of people. The Ann Arbor Observer did an article once on that very thing, I think it was 40 year anniversary of it or whatever. They interviewed all these musicians, George Bedard is in there, Peter Madcat Ruth. Mr. B is in there, and I'm in there. Al Nalli in there. We all said basically the same thing, how much of an influence that was. That's why we played in bands and things like that. I got into that when I was about, I was probably 10 when just goofing around with friends, that sort of thing. I did that for a long time. The first real band that I had was, I think it was 17. It was called Hot and Nasty. It was a husband and wife. We used to play at Bimbos on the Hill, which is now Paesano's. I didn't make first hour very often in school because it was up till two in the morning just about every night.
• [00:06:22] KATRINA ANBENDER: What age were you when you were doing this then?
• [00:06:24] JIM KING: Seventeen.
• [00:06:24] KATRINA ANBENDER: You were performing at Bimbos.
• [00:06:26] JIM KING: Yeah.
• [00:06:27] KATRINA ANBENDER: Wow.
• [00:06:28] JIM KING: Bimbos, Frat parties and whatever.
• [00:06:32] AMY CANTU: Was it Blues, mostly or?
• [00:06:34] JIM KING: No, this was current pop music. Whatever the audience wanted, basically. Then I started my own band then and it was called Masquerade. We played a lot. We played all over the place. We started doing lots of touring. Back then, this would have been in the 70s. You always wanted to take over the best club in the town that you were playing, and that was always the goal to do. We did that in Chicago. We did it in St. Louis. A lot of cities that we played, we were the biggest best thing, including Ann Arbor. We used to play a place called Second Chance. Some of you might have heard of that. Lot of famous people played there, and I still talk to the owner John Carver, a good friend of mine. He continues to tell me that my band made more money for him than any other band that played there. I said, John, how about coughing some of it up, because you didn't pay us much back then.
• [00:07:42] KATRINA ANBENDER: You said Second Chance, Bimbos on the Hill. Was there anywhere else that you performed around town? Did you have a favorite place to perform?
• [00:07:50] JIM KING: Second Chance was the place everybody wanted to play there. That was the place to go. Blind Pig, I played clubs like that. Before Second Chance opened up, we played at this place called the Suds Factory. It was in Ypsilanti. It was this giant warehouse. I mean, it was so archaic. The bar consisted of two garbage cans and a piece of plywood put over. That was their bar. But we didn't care. It was a place to play, and we loved it. It was wonderful. When you play every single night like that, by the way, and that's where we did that, you get good. You can't help but get good. We played every night.
• [00:08:34] AMY CANTU: How many instruments did you play?
• [00:08:36] JIM KING: Guitar and bass and keyboards. Mostly keyboards.
• [00:08:43] AMY CANTU: Were your band members able to get instruments from your store?
• [00:08:45] JIM KING: [Laughter] No.
• [00:08:50] JIM KING: We weren't that kind of a store. We were pretty much strictly piano and home organs back then. But there was people that helped support us and bought us some.
• [00:09:00] AMY CANTU: That's great.
• [00:09:01] JIM KING: Then we started making money, and I remember every week we played with this drummer, he was a great drummer. Neil Buchanan was his name. But he'd break $70 cymbals, like they were candy and we'd have to go replace them every single week. Guitar strings, all that stuff.
• [00:09:23] KATRINA ANBENDER: You said you liked playing Second Chance best. What set it apart?
• [00:09:27] JIM KING: Well, it was multiple balconies. There's three balconies. It was really cool from a stage point of view, to look up and see, it's just a wall of people. You couldn't even see the wood. It was all bodies going crazy. It was a lot of fun. Opened up for a lot of acts there. Freddie King was one of my favorites. He was a great guy and great guitar player, great musician. A lot of blues guys. I think my love of the blues at age 7, 8, 9, something like that. Would serve us good when I played with Freddie King, BB King, we opened up for him. Who else? Albert King? All the Kings. Jim King? No.
• [00:10:16] AMY CANTU: Did you attend the Ann Arbor blues festival?
• [00:10:19] JIM KING: Yes, I did.
• [00:10:20] AMY CANTU: What was that like?
• [00:10:22] JIM KING: That was unbelievable. In 1972 and 1971. To see James Brown, I flipped out. It was so good. A lot of other acts that played there, too. Johnny Winter. He was cool.
• [00:10:38] KATRINA ANBENDER: You performed a lot. I assume you then were also going to and watching a lot of concerts as well as people were coming in?
• [00:10:45] JIM KING: Not really. I was always playing so I couldn't go. People tell me about, well, two band members, they went to see the Queen show, and it was right before Bohemian Rhapsody was put out. It was at the Masonic Temple in Detroit, they went there, and they were staying at the Statler Hilton. My two buddies just went up to the bar, and then two guys from Queen, the drummer and the guitar player came in, and my bandmates sent a bottle of wine over to them. Then they said, come on over and enjoy the wine you just sent us. They stayed there for like three hours talking to him. Probably more bottles of wine and all that. But that was pretty cool. I missed out on a lot of seeing concerts because I was always playing. I didn't have very many days off.
• [00:11:46] AMY CANTU: You mentioned that your dad got a start in Grinnell's and then eventually opened the store. What do you know about his decision to do that, to start the store?
• [00:11:56] JIM KING: He was mentally ill at that time. [Laughter] I think the fact that he was based on commission at Grinnell's and when you own the place, you can make a lot more money. He had seven kids to support. That must have been difficult. I can't imagine it, to be honest with you.
• [00:12:20] KATRINA ANBENDER: Where are you in the seven kids?
• [00:12:23] JIM KING: Smack dab in the middle.
• [00:12:28] KATRINA ANBENDER: You went through where it [King's Keyboard Hosue] was located at various times. Do you know why it made those moves throughout the years?
• [00:12:36] JIM KING: That's a good question. Certainly the first store, which was just west of afternoon delight, just too small. He opened that store up 1961, June 30th, with four pianos. That was the beginning of it right there and then they started growing and growing and growing. I used to clean the bathrooms and clean the piano keys, not necessarily in that order.
• [00:13:11] KATRINA ANBENDER: How old were you when you started doing work around the store?
• [00:13:15] JIM KING: I must have been 10 or so. Right about that, 1964.
• [00:13:22] KATRINA ANBENDER: Did you stay involved with the store throughout all those years or was it...
• [00:13:25] JIM KING: Not too much. My brother and I would move organs. We had a VW bus. It said King's Keyboard House on the side of it, and we moved home organs. We could handle that. Pianos, no, they're too heavy. But the home organ we would deliver. I remember that. But I wasn't that that involved in it then.
• [00:13:45] KATRINA ANBENDER: How did the pianos get moved then?
• [00:13:48] JIM KING: Piano movers. Oh, my gosh. There was a guy. I got to tell you this story. There was a guy. He worked for one of the moving companies. He's a little short guy, but stubby, and he always had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. I saw him move an upright piano, big old turn of the century uprights, by himself. It was off the back of a truck, put it on a dolly, rolled it in, put it in place.
• [00:14:18] JIM KING: One guy doing that. Then somebody told me that they saw it, but I didn't see it, that he moved a console piano by himself up a flight of stairs.
• [00:14:30] AMY CANTU: What?
• [00:14:30] JIM KING: That's circus stuff right there.
• [00:14:32] AMY CANTU: That's incredible. Oh, my gosh. I know the store has provided instruments for a number of famous people. Can you tell us a couple of those stories?
• [00:14:40] JIM KING: Well, we provided a piano for John Lennon when he played at Crisler Arena for the Free John concert. Well, I looked for that piano. I found the serial number, and I found out who bought it. The person - I couldn't get in touch with them. I still try to get in touch with them, but I can't find them. But it was a Kawai console. I remember that.
• [00:15:03] AMY CANTU: Did he ask specifically?
• [00:15:05] JIM KING: No.
• [00:15:06] AMY CANTU: No. They just asked for any piano?
• [00:15:07] JIM KING: I think he didn't even ask for it. I think he just showed up with his guitar, hoping that there was an amplifier there, hoping that there was a band that would back him up. There was all that there. It was a pretty big deal. Stevie Wonder played. The UP. Do you guys remember the UP?
• [00:15:24] AMY CANTU: Yeah. Well, so that concert, did Stevie Wonder bring his own piano there?
• [00:15:30] JIM KING: He didn't play piano. His keyboard and his Hohner D6 Clavinet. The Clavinet was cool.
• [00:15:38] AMY CANTU: Rod Stewart?
• [00:15:41] JIM KING: That's another story.
• [00:15:42] AMY CANTU: Tell us.
• [00:15:43] JIM KING: He didn't play at that concert. We rented him a concert grand. This is an interesting story. I'm surprised you brought that up. They were drinking Courvoisier the last half of the set out of the bottle. Everybody had their own bottle of Courvoisier. That's a lot. One drink and I'd be on the floor. They were drinking a bottle of Courvoisier. It was a Steinway grand, nine foot concert grand that had a Baldwin action. It was either that or a Baldwin piano and it had a Steinway action. I remember the piano well. That was on the store on Main Street, right next to the Real Seafood Company. That's where that piano was. The store was no wider than this room here, which is 10 feet, 15 feet. That's probably 15 feet wide. That nine foot concert grand fit in there vertically. Halfway through the show, and I'm watching the show, Bad Finger opened up for them. That's why I wanted to go to that show.
• [00:16:53] AMY CANTU: Is this at Crisler?
• [00:16:57] JIM KING: Yeah. They did their set, and then Rod Stewart comes on, started drinking halfway through the show. At the end of the show, the piano player didn't like the piano because I think it was a Baldwin with a Steinway because it didn't say Steinway and they probably asked for a Steinway piano in their rider and didn't get it. They got mad, and they picked up hammer and took it to the piano.
• [00:17:19] AMY CANTU: What?
• [00:17:20] JIM KING: Yeah, just destroyed this piano. I think it got rebuilt, basically. Then at that time, I was working, I think I was 16 or 17. I was also working at Weber's Inn. I remember I did room service. I had a little room service outfit. I should have been on the love boat. But I remember working and the management was in a bad mood and talking to each other. Police, I think, came in. They did the same thing to their hotel rooms, multiple rooms as they did to that piano, destroyed it. That was the thing to do back then, I guess.
• [00:18:04] KATRINA ANBENDER: Speaking of having worked at Weber's, where else have you worked around town?
• [00:18:10] JIM KING: Let's see. I worked at Ponderosa. Remember that place?
• [00:18:16] AMY CANTU: Yeah.
• [00:18:16] JIM KING: It was on Washtenaw. Yeah. I got fired because I was the janitor, and I'd come in after the place was closed. Get out of there about 3:00 in the morning, and I used to take a piece of chocolate pie, because I loved it. They didn't like that. They didn't think I deserved it. A piece of chocolate pie after cleaning the place. I got fired from there. Where else did I work? I wasn't real big on the job thing. I did make cars for a while, 1978. I put the brushes on the starters at FoMoCo, Ford Motor Company for you people that don't know what that is.
• [00:18:57] AMY CANTU: When did you take over ownership, and what changes did you make?
• [00:19:01] JIM KING: 2006.
• [00:19:04] JIM KING: What changes did I make? I didn't make a lot of changes, certainly not at first. There was a lot of things that were happening in the economy like 2008, and I had to move out of that store into the store we're in now because it was quite a bit cheaper and we were able to continue on the business because we could afford it. That place that's now DreamMakers, they build bathrooms and bedrooms. That was so big. We had a lot of concerts down there, though. In the basement, we built a stage and had lights and everything. It was fun.
• [00:19:44] AMY CANTU: Tell us more about that.
• [00:19:46] JIM KING: Well, it was just local people would volunteer, and it would be on a Friday night or Saturday night and just have some fun and drink and listen to music.
• [00:20:01] KATRINA ANBENDER: What kind of music?
• [00:20:02] JIM KING: Every kind you can think of. There's classical artists that would perform, jazz people would perform. I used to have these piano parties at the store where we would have them on Sunday 2:00 to 4:00 every other month. We'd pick a day in the month, usually in the middle of the month, and then have a piano party, and then two months later, we'd do the same thing. It was two hours long, two sets I broke it down to. In those two sets, I was the MC, and I would sign the people up that wanted to play. If they didn't want to play, they didn't have to play. If they wanted to play, they could play their one song. Everybody would be so nervous as cats, and I tried to calm them down as much as I could. My desk, I just cleaned everything off of it and turned into the buffet table, the wine and cheese table. They'd play one song, then take a break, talk about it, and then how bad they did, and "I made a mistake in measure 33." Nobody knew that. You sounded great. I try and encourage them as much as I could. Then they'd go up for the second set after performing one song. Before that, they would perform one on the second set too. The difference was amazing to see the confidence level that they achieved. The dynamics of the piece they were playing. It would go loud and soft, perfect timing. It was really interesting to do that. I'm going to start doing that again real soon.
• [00:21:43] AMY CANTU: What does a piano store owner really think about people that come into the store and start playing the pianos?
• [00:21:50] JIM KING: That's a very good question. You want to know the truth to that?
• [00:21:53] AMY CANTU: Yeah.
• [00:21:53] JIM KING: I love it.
• [00:21:55] AMY CANTU: How long do they play before you're like, okay, that's enough.
• [00:21:58] JIM KING: As soon as they bring their checkbook out, and then I'm all over it. [Laughter]
• [00:22:03] AMY CANTU: Good answer.
• [00:22:04] KATRINA ANBENDER: You come from a large family, and you started working there when you were quite young. Was all of your family involved in the store at different points and are there others who are still involved?
• [00:22:14] JIM KING: My oldest sister worked there. She was a salesperson there. My brother, Rob, worked there for a long time. He was more of a repair guy. He would clean the inside of the pianos out and just tune them. He did learn to tune. We had an interesting tuner there. His name is Jack Dewey, very autistic. His mother actually wrote a book on autism. She's really brought that disease to the forefront back in the '50s, I think. He had perfect pitch. He would hear, like, a car screech its brakes outside right on the stadium. He'd play the exact same cluster of notes that it took to make that sound of the tires. He worked there, not in the family, but we treated him like he was. Who else? My sister Julie worked there and still works there. She's worked there a long time.
• [00:23:05] KATRINA ANBENDER: King's was recently sold?
• [00:23:08] JIM KING: We're merging with a company called Solich Piano. They're very big. They got a store in Columbus, Ohio. They got a store in Pittsburgh, store in Cleveland, store in Troy. It's going to be King's Keyboard House, but the building will be owned by him. I've known Thomas for quite a few years here, and we just agree on everything. We're really kindred souls. We think the same way about business. We think the same way about just a lot of things, movies and stuff like that. Because we got along, we started talking about this idea, probably three years ago, there was a conference thing that I was doing at Concordia University. We talked for quite a while, three hours, and we talked about exactly what's happening with his business. And then we talked about doing Ann Arbor and how much of a piano town Ann Arbor is. It really is. People come to Ann Arbor for their culture, and people that live here know and appreciate it. They take it for granted, a lot of them. There's so many great things that happen in this town musically, for entertainment wise, in general. Because of that, we think we can be very successful here in this town.
• [00:24:45] KATRINA ANBENDER: As a longtime local, what do you see as the biggest changes?
• [00:24:51] JIM KING: You guys recognize downtown Ann Arbor now? Because I don't. There's more cranes in this town than the place that built the cranes. It's getting hard to recognize. But I'm not on the city council, so well, they just passed the CTI, where you can build 30 stories. My building is one of those places. I would imagine somebody is going to come along and buy that building pretty soon.
• [00:25:22] KATRINA ANBENDER: Is there no one from the younger generation who has...
• [00:25:24] JIM KING: It's a good question, and I get that question a lot. The answer is no. I don't know why. That worries me. It worries me, not only in my family and my generation, not taking an interest like I took an interest in it. Is that representative of the kids today in general? I hope not.
• [00:25:45] AMY CANTU: You mean in terms of the business itself or the interest in the arts?
• [00:25:49] JIM KING: I think the interest in the art because that creates the business. But if you have a lot of piano players, and this is a piano town, it's good, but there's not enough interest to take over. It's a lot of work. You definitely have ebbs and things. It's just it's hard to do that these days. Real estate is very expensive in Ann Arbor, especially commercial real estate. It's gone up and gone up, and it's going to continue to go up. Why? Because people are paying it.
• [00:26:26] AMY CANTU: What are you most proud of?
• [00:26:28] JIM KING: What am I most proud of? Just surviving in this business climate that we're in, surviving in a business that could be I'm not going to say obsolete, but it's less of an impact on kids' lives than their phone, for instance.
• [00:26:52] KATRINA ANBENDER: Well, thank you so much for joining us today.
• [00:26:56] JIM KING: Thank you very much. It's been a real pressure - pleasure. I'm just kidding. You guys are great.
• [00:27:08] AMY CANTU: AADL Talks To is a production of the Ann Arbor District Library.