"MR. YAMAHA DIES": Group Captain

“MR. YAMAHA DIES”: Group Captain Mandrake links to this CNN.com story, which reports that Genichi Kawakami, who took over his father’s business and made Japan’s Yamaha into a household name around the world through a combination of musical instruments and motorbikes, died on Saturday at the age of 90.

Having had my share of Yamaha musical equipment in the mid-1980s during my rock and roll days, I can attest to their high quality. And their synthesizer, the DX-7, was the sound of pop music during that period. it was heard on virtually every pop record, and its spin-offs are still popular to this day.