By William Smith
Wherever he looks inside Mundt Piano and Organ, Bill Mundt Jr. sees his late father — Bill Mundt Sr.
He remembers the numerous hours he spent working alongside his father, traveling as far as Keosauqua to tune pianos alongside him.
Bill Jr. didn’t go to school to learn the art of tuning. He was already busy attending junior high. He learned on the job.
“My dad started waking me up at 14 on Saturdays and said, ‘You’re coming to work,’ ” he said.
The history of Mundt Piano and Organ stretches back to Bill’s great-grandfather, who came to the U.S. from Germany to tune pianos. That soon became a business.
“He started the piano service. For years, it was just a service business. And then my grandpa opened the retail when he was 61,” Bill said.
Bill was born in Burlington in 1954 and was not thrilled about going into the family business when he was a teenager.
“I wanted to be a Major League Baseball player. But I realized if you don’t make the local high school team, you’re probably not going to make a Major League team,” he said.
But then something strange happened as Bill worked on pianos. He started to like it. That led to piano lessons – though Bill would never consider himself a musician — more of a hobbyist.
“I played the piano a little bit; when the organ business was good, I liked that. I played quite a bit so I could demonstrate the pianos,” Bill said.
The store itself hopped around Burlington for decades, moving to a new location every few years. It finally settled at its current location on Jefferson Street.
Bill still remembers specific conversations with his father in the break room. He treasures the years he spent working side-by-side with Bill Sr. When Bill got older and bought his own house, his father spent every free moment helping him renovate it.
“In all those years, I think we only got into an argument a few times. Whatever it was, it was forgotten the next day,” Bill said.
Those days didn’t last forever. Bill took over after his father passed, working six days a week tuning pianos and running the store. The 1980s was a strong era for music sales of any kind, and Mundt sold everything you needed to make music. Clarinets, pianos, organs, guitars. He still does.
However, the piano market has shrunk considerably over the past few decades, and the organ market is nonexistent. Mundt said he was able to survive the downturn through diversifying. His biggest moneymaker comes through instrument rentals for local students.
There are at least a couple of hundred Mundt instruments in students’ hands right now. The instruments are tuned and serviced every time they return to the store, giving Mundt’s an advantage over retail stores with no service plan.
“We take care of all routine maintenance unless, your kid hit his sister over the head with the trombone,” Mundt said with a laugh. “We don’t cover that.”
Despite working nearly every day, Bill’s personal life was just as full as his business. He got married, got divorced, and got custody of his three children. Raising three children at the ages of eight, five, and four wasn’t easy, and Bill remarried a woman with three kids of her own.
“People used to call us The Brady Bunch,” he said, laughing again.
That marriage later ended, but Bill only had kind words about both his ex-wives.
“I don’t regret any of it,” he said.
Bill’s heart was scarred more profoundly by the loss of his son, who died of cancer. Just like his father, Bill worked alongside his son every day.
“It was a tumor up here,” Bill said, pointing to his head. “They couldn’t operate on it. It wasn’t even a tumor. It (the cancer) was just all spread out.”
These days, Bill is semi-retired and is having the time of his life. He joined some local pool leagues after his kids grew up and moved out. He also installed a gym on the bottom floor of the shop, which he treats like a second home.
“I can’t just sit around at the house and do nothing,” he said. “I’m still having fun.”