About Us
Frank Baxter
My name is Frank Baxter (aka Mr. PianoWorld) and I'm a pianist, composer, and recording artist.
I'm also the founder of Piano World , the world’s most popular site for all things piano and home of the world famous piano forums. (I sold Piano World in September 2022).
Ours is a Special Kind of Love is my first professionally recorded original piece.
It is currently available on BandCamp https://frankbaxtermrpianoworld.bandcamp.com/track/ours-is-a-special-kind-of-love
Me banging out some tunes in the Estonia piano booth at the NAMM show...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mc1beIfo_Ic
First piece is the end of one I composed, second one is my take on Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, and the last is Billy Joel's Root Beer Rag.
Piano World first started as All About Pianos! (see picture below), hosted on a now defunct service, originally at tiac.net, then at something like http://pages.prodigy.com/pianos/ (don’t bother clicking, it stopped working years ago). I used to be able to find some of the old pages in archives.
As the site attracted more visitors I found I needed to add new content and new areas. And so it grew.
I’d like to thank everyone who has been a part of this journey. Some of you have been here since the beginning, others are new arrivals, and still others are yet to discover us (but I hope they do).
And now what started as a hobby is how I make my living.
And now I’d like to share a few memories from my journey to today…
Born November 26, 1951
1950’s – realized my Dad could play the piano, really well (even if he was an “iron worker” by trade).
Late 1950’s – early 1960’s, realized I liked some of the 45’s my sister played.
Couldn’t get to sleep at night because my parents let a local rock (50’s rock) band practice in our living room. (the drummer went on to work on the Johnny Carson show).
1960’s – realized girls liked musicians, learned the piano/keyboard, started a local band with my new friend from the city, Joey Doringer (amazing guitarist who attended Berklee School of music, could play anything).
1969 / 1970 – first real band was a clone of The Allman Brothers (two great guitarists, two drummers)
1968/1969 – Started working for Curtis Music Stores (delivering pianos after school, later learned about pianos from Raymond Curtis (son of the original owner who opened the store in 1890) and George Cole (graduate of Bennett Street school).
1970’s – played in rock/blues bands and managed music stores
1980’s opened my own music store
1990’s – continued playing music and tuning pianos, but also worked for McGraw-Hill (publisher) and became a web developer and SEO expert. Started Piano world
2000’s – continued to develop Piano World, tune pianos, play gigs.
2022 - Sold Piano World! But still tuning pianos, playing gigs, hosting piano parties, and participating in the Piano Forums.