Wealth & Money Quote by Marian McPartland

McPartland’s jab lands because it’s musician-funny: dry, practical, and delivered with the casual authority of someone who’s lived inside the industry long enough to smell trouble before it makes the trades. “Sort of getting to be a bit funny” reads like understatement as a weapon. She’s not ranting; she’s shrugging. That shrug is the critique.

The surface complaint is mundane - pianos aren’t showing up - but the subtext is about what happens when craft gets folded into corporate logic. Baldwin was once a real name in American piano-making; Gibson is shorthand for a different lane entirely, a guitar brand with its own mythology. McPartland isn’t litigating the merger’s balance sheet. She’s pointing at the cultural mismatch: a company buying “the whole outfit” and then failing at the unglamorous, essential work of serving working musicians.

“Suddenly went bankrupt” also nods to how quickly institutions that feel permanent can collapse when they’re mismanaged, under-capitalized, or simply outpaced. Jazz players, especially, have long operated in ecosystems where the room, the booking, the instrument, the maintenance - the infrastructure - is always precarious. Her line about “providing pianos” isn’t just consumer irritation; it’s about professional dependency. A pianist’s tool isn’t optional, and when the supply chain breaks, the music becomes collateral damage.

The humor keeps it from sounding like nostalgia. It’s a working artist clocking a market reality: brands survive; reliability doesn’t always make it through the acquisition.