The Story of Famous Jerry


I graduated high school and went right out on the road playing music all over the southeast, eventually living in Richmond, Virginia. One day, a buddy called me and asked if I wanted to make some extra money. The job was moving a piano from a local music store. My help was requested time and time again for the next few years. Not too much later, my buddy told me that since I had the experience and skills, he could send me more work as long as I had the equipment and truck. So I purchased a dolly, some moving blankets and a skidboard. He was sending me a few moves here and there and were doing about 2 – 4 jobs a month. In fact my wife, and I would do a lot of the moving ourselves especially the verticals.

A few years later My wife and I decided we were going to quit the road. Since I had been playing music for over 20 years at this point, I had no clue what I was going to do for a living! Then out of the blue, another music store called and said they had heard I did deliveries and offered work. I jumped at the chance and we started doing deliveries for them. Over time the stores (and us) got a little bit more busy. Enough other people started calling including Richmond Symphony, Church’s, and tuners. After a while, we got so busy that we had a business before we even realized what was going on – strictly from word-of-mouth.

We eventually quit traveling, although still playing a little here and there. One day, I was going into peoples homes the customer said, “so you’re the famous Jerry!” This kept happening over and over. After a few times, I asked a couple of customers why they called me that they told me, “we called 10 places and eight of them gave us your name”. Well that was as good a name for a business as any. Although we’re still primarily word-of-mouth, we now have a website and our trucks are lettered. That’s about it as far as adverting gets for us.