Shreveport Music began in downtown Shreveport all the way back in 1910. In 1961, the company was purchased by Jack Teach and now run by his son Don Teach since 1979.

The company went from its original downtown quarters to Kings Highway to Highland to Bert Kouns to East 70th to its current home at 115 Kings Highway where the store encompasses around 10,000 square feet. The shop is filled with pianos, guitars, speakers and equipment of all sorts. The store has 65 rental keyboards alone.

Though it is like a foreign word to many, much of the company’s business is in “backline.”

“Backline means we provide instruments and speakers for many of the traveling shows that come to The Strand, to perform with the Shreveport Symphony and at the casino showrooms. These groups don’t want to have to travel with drums and sound systems so the venues can rent from us and simplify the process of touring,” Teach said. “Sometimes they even rent the instruments from us.”

“‘Go where the pros go’ is more than a slogan,” Teach said. “It is the mindset that sets us apart from anyone else in the market.”

“Our shop is oriented towards the professional musician. We sell instruments and gear for working musicians. Like anyone else that uses tools to earn a living, working musicians demand gear that is reliable with superior quality and is built to last,” Teach said.

One of the pros that go to Shreveport Music on a regular basis is Grammynominated Shreveport music icon singer/ songwriter/guitarist Buddy Flett.

“Me and Don go all the way back to high school,” Flett said. “And when A Train was together on the road, Don came to our aid many times. If something broke down Don was always there to fix it. I tell you the guy can fix anything.”

“At one point, I lived only a couple of blocks from where the store was located at the time. They had air conditioning and I didn’t so I would spend lots of time hanging out there. Let me tell you, Don really knows his stuff,” Flett said.

Though Teach is the go-to guy for Flett and most of the area’s musicians, Teach himself is surprisingly not a musician.

“I tried a little when I was in junior high school but realized I was really horrible as a musician,” Teach said.

But he did have an affinity for the technical side of instruments. For a time before he took over Shreveport Music, he worked for the Leslie and Hammond organ company and later Marantz.

Today, when not at Shreveport Music surrounded by instruments, Teach is at his home outside Shreveport where he is surrounded by his collection of some 40 player pianos, old carousel organs and more. He is passionate about this hobby and is a renowned and respected expert on these collectible instruments. He restores these instruments for high end collectors all across the country. He has worked on these instruments for the California company that places them in the Texas State Fair and for the wealthy owner of a medical instrument company in Wisconsin among others.

“I am one of the only piano techs around as a store owner, and I have contributed to many textbooks at various schools and am a source in many histories of the piano,” Teach said.

But his day job is still keeping everything going at Shreveport Music where his wife, Adrian, keeps an eye on the books. “We have been here much longer than anyone else,” Teach said.

Shreveport Music now has six employees, and Teach feels his main competition is the Internet.

“A lot of people shop the Internet because they think it is always cheaper. But if they would check us out, they would find in most cases we are actually the least expensive,” Teach said.

Call Shreveport Music at 798-6000.