Abstracted from an article by David Joyner, Ph.D., of Pacific Lutheran University.

The Jesse French Piano and Organ Company was headquartered in St. Louis and Nashville with stores throughout the South and Midwest, making it the largest music retailer network outside of New York and the Northeast. To further his own business, French involved himself indirectly with the publication of key Mississippi Valley ragtime composers. Ragtime historians have long stressed the important link between the sale of ragtime sheet music and the sale of pianos, both reaching their peak during the ragtime era (c. 1897-1917).

French was also an important family and business member of the Starr and Gennett piano and recording enterprise. The music industry dynasty of Jesse French and his connection with Starr and Gennett begins with his father-in-law John Lumsden. Lumsden was born in Southhampton, England in 1824, and moved to America in 1842. He married in 1848 and thereafter had three daughters. Callie married Jesse French in 1872, Maria married Oscar Addison Field in 1882, and Alice married Henry Gennett in 1875. The men these three daughters married are the principal figures in the development of the French empire, which came to include Starr and Gennett.

French started his company in Nashville and was soon successful. In 1883, he entered business in St. Louis with his brother-in-law, Oscar Addison Field, first as Field, French, and Company, then as the Field-French Piano Company. Field was born in New York State in 1847, entered the piano business in Nashville in 1875 (probably with French), married John Lumsden's daughter Maria in 1882, and moved to St. Louis in 1883. Under the leadership of Field, French, and Lumsden, the Field-French Piano Company was incorporated in 1887 as The Jesse French Piano and Organ Company of St. Louis. Lumsden, who had been in partnership with French and Field separately and collectively, also moved to St. Louis in 1888.

By the time of its incorporation, The Jesse French Piano and Organ Company was a gigantic retailer of pianos and organs. Based in Nashville, it had branches in Memphis, Little Rock, St. Louis, Dallas, Birmingham, and Montgomery, with a force of one hundred traveling salesmen. The company had grown large enough that it decided to manufacture its own line of pianos. To this end, it turned its interests to the Starr Piano Company of Richmond, Indiana.

In 1872, James Starr (1824-1900) teamed up with Richard Jackson and George Trayser to produce pianos in Richmond. Trayser had founded the first piano factory west of the Allegheny Mountains in Indianapolis in 1849. In 1884, the Richmond firm became James M. Starr and Company. Around the same time, the company moved operations to a water-powered factory in the Whitewater River Valley Gorge. In 1893, the controlling interest of the company went to Field, French, and the stockholders of the Jesse French Piano and Organ Company. Merger negotiations had begun in 1892 and were completed on April 7, 1893, when the new Starr Piano Company was organized. The quality pianos produced by this merger were nationally recognized the same year at the Chicago Columbian Exposition, the event that helped introduce ragtime to the world. The Starr Piano Company produced numerous lines of pianos under these names: Starr, Jesse French, Cumberland, Duchess, Gennett, Minum, Trayser, Royal, Pullman, Remington, Coronado, and Richmond pianos.

John Lumsden had involved himself with the Starr Company long before Jesse French did, and it was probably he who brought Starr and French together. Upon Starr Piano's incorporation in 1893, Lumsden's third son-in-law, Henry Gennett, entered the picture. Henry married Lumsden's daughter Alice and moved with his father-in-law to Richmond, Indiana. When the Starr and French companies merged, Benjamin Starr became president with Gennett and Lumsden as secretary and treasurer. By 1900, the factory was turning out 6,000 pianos per year.

After the death of Lumsden in 1898 and Starr in 1903, Gennett took over as president of the Starr Piano Company with his three sons acting as officers. They manufactured pianos in 52 styles and had sales rooms in twenty-four cities. In 1902, Field and Gennett bought out their brother-in-law's stock in the Jesse French Piano and Organ Company, including the Starr Piano Company. Starr remained in business until 1952.

It can be fairly said that the French evolution succeeded while ragtime was king. As noted at the outset, Jesse French knew that sheet music and piano sales were interdependent; the former helped move the latter. Consequently, he encouraged the production of piano rags because they were becoming wildly popular with the younger generation. Ragtime was truly the rock and roll of its day. Through the French connection, Starr and Gennett were strongly linked to one of the most defining American popular music styles of all time. That Gennett Records would also play to emerging markets may have been the result of a Starr business strategy inherited from Jesse French.

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