Over the last 75 years, the Portman family has weathered a speeding car that crashed into their music store, a fire that destroyed the store and, more recently, an economy that has cut many family budgets for niceties such as music training.
“We’re always going forward, but it’s taking more work and effort to make the company grow,” said Jerry Portman, who with his wife Myra owns Portman’s Music Superstores in Savannah and Augusta and smaller Portman’s Music Stores in Brunswick and Albany.
For thousands of Savannah residents spanning four generations, the Portman name is synonymous with music.
About 65 people work at the four stores, including eight who travel to 300 schools in south Georgia and southern South Carolina, selling, renting and repairing band instruments.
About 60 percent of the chain’s business is related to school bands, and the rest is devoted to other facets of the music industry, including sound systems, professional audio, guitars, percussion and keyboards.
The chain has several
employees who have worked for the company for decades, in what Myra Portman describes as a “family.”
The Portmans opened their first music store downtown at the corner of Broughton and Montgomery streets in 1936.
But the family’s history in the music business started earlier than that, in 1910, when Jerry Portman’s grandfather Sam, who emigrated from Russia, opened a pawn shop that sold musical instruments.
Uncle Sam’s pawn shop was at the corner of Broughton and West Broad.
Ben Portman always wanted to play an instrument in the school band, but his family couldn’t afford the instruments so instead he played sports.
He was glad to start a business that helped others pursue the musical interests he couldn’t.
At first, the store was called Wolf’s Music because the man who owned the building had a business there named “Wolf’s” and the Portmans couldn’t afford to buy a new sign, Jerry Portman said.
When a driver fleeing from police crashed into the store in 1960, knocking over key support beams, the owner of the building refused to make repairs. “You can move, or you can buy the building and fix it yourself,” the landlord told the Portmans.
They bought the building and renovated it, changing the name from “Wolf’s Music” to “Ben Portman’s MusiCenter.”
Jerry and his brother Michael bought the store from their parents in 1975.
In September 1978, a fire caused by a faulty fluorescent light burned the second floor, which was the warehouse where most of the instruments were stored, and water damaged everything on the first floor. The family didn’t have enough insurance to cover the losses.
The fire could have ended the family business. “But we were determined not to let it happen,” Jerry Portman said. “We had to pay people’s salaries.”
They rented band instruments from a warehouse nearby, worked feverishly to clean the store and were able to reopen after a few weeks.
In 1993, the brothers moved the store to Abercorn Street, just north of Oglethorpe Mall, where it remains today. They changed the name to Portman’s Music Superstore.
About 12 years ago, they began expanding to other cities, starting with Brunswick, then Augusta and Albany.
Michael Portman retired in 2001, leaving Jerry and Myra Portman to run the business.
Ben Portman died in October 1998, and Pearl Portman died in December 2005.
The sons honor their parents with a scholarship in their name at Armstrong Atlantic State University. They also donate instruments to needy school children, so the children can have what Ben Portman didn’t.
The sons also started a line of band instruments named after their father, “Benjamin.”
Jerry Portman said the store prides itself for selling “music for life,” with instruments suited to everyone from beginners to professionals in all age groups.
The store’s 6,500-square-foot showroom is packed with every type of instrument, ranging from a tambourine for $5 to a wooden bassoon for $6,800.
The showroom is only about one-third of the building. The rest is divided among offices and practice rooms, where teachers give music lessons, and warehouse and repair shops.
The store’s workers, who go to school to learn how to repair instruments, can fix most anything, and they can make replacement parts for instruments that are no longer made.
Jerry Portman said even when economic times are tough, parents realize the importance of a music and how much learning the “language of music” can help students in their other studies.
He said recent advances in technology have lowered prices and made it easier for parents to make sure their children can study music.
For example, instead of buying an expensive, heavy, traditional piano that needs to be tuned, they can instead buy an electronic piano for $900 that has a full-size keyboard just like an acoustic piano.
The keys are weighted the same as keys on traditional pianos; the instrument plays louder when the keys are pushed harder. Computer programs are designed to help students learn to play the electronic pianos.
And the digital pianos also have one major advantage for families who would rather not hear “Chopsticks” or “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” ad nauseum — headphones.
Changing technology in the 1930s set the stage for an increased interest in music. Savannah’s first radio station, WTOC AM, short for “Welcome To Our City,” began to broadcast music that previously had only received limited exposure in major cities.
In 1936, Savannah’s Johnny Mercer became a household name through hits such as “I’m An Old Cowhand from the Rio Grande” and “Goody, Goody.”
That same year, Billboard published its first hit list led by Bing Crosby’s “Pennies From Heaven.”
The big band era was blossoming, led by Benny Goodman’s “Stomping at the Savoy.”
Locally, the music of big bands and accompanying swing dancing could be enjoyed in the ballroom at Johnny Harris Restaurant and on the pier at Tybrisia.
Portman’s sold acoustic guitars, accordions, string instruments, band instruments and accessories until the late 1940’s.
After World War II, the C.G. Conn and Selmer Band Instrument companies came to Ben Portman and asked him to rent their band instruments to students in the public schools.
In the mid 1950’s, when electric guitars were developed by Leo Fender and the Gibson Guitar Company, Portman’s began selling those guitars and the amplifiers that were necessary to make them audible.
By the early 1960s, Ben Portman’s MusiCenter had added teaching studios, and its salesmen were visiting schools all across the area.
Source: Portman’s Music