Kay Musical Instrument Company Kay Musical Instrument Company Kay Musical Instrument Company was a musical instrument manufacturer of the United States, in operation from the 1930s until the 1960s. Kay was established in 1931 in Chicago, Illinois, by Henry Kay Kuhrmeyer, from the assets of the former Stromberg-Voisinet (founded as Groeschel Mandolin Company in 1890). Kay offered their first electric guitar in 1936 — five years after the Rickenbacker "Frying pan", and the same year as the Gibson ES-150. However, the Kuhrmeyer-owned Stromberg-Voisinet brand had produced the Stromberg Electro even earlier, in 1928, making the short-lived model arguably the first commercial electric guitar. The
Musical Instrument Museum (Volgograd) collected and restored musical instruments. When he was young, Evgeny Nikolayevich learned to play the accordion - which evidently was his first instrument. One day, when his uncle forgot the accordion at his brother's house, he came back to find it the next morning and surprisingly found his seven-year-old nephew playing folk melodies, without a single mistake. His uncle immediately decided to gift the accordion to his nephew. According to his granddaughter — Lyudmila Kravchenko, Evgeny was able to master the tool in just one night. Before the war in 1926, Evgeny Nikolayevich began to collect art. He managed to