A Chicago musician with a bag of supplies.

Humes & Berg dates itself to 1935 and to Willie Berg, a working musician in Chicago. In the history its website carried in 2009 and 2012, Berg went round the city’s clubs selling valve oil, reeds, cymbals and other supplies to band members from a bag he carried, and played jobs whenever he could get them. The company lists bandleaders he got to know that way — Duke Ellington, Harry James, Count Basie, Woody Herman and the Dorsey brothers — and says the decisive push came from Glenn Miller, who encouraged him to make mutes that would help a brass section blend.

The result, the company says, was the Stonelined mute, which Berg and his wife, Faye, made in their small apartment on Chicago’s South Side and sold to musicians passing through town. Its product pages still say that “Willie Berg invented Stone lined Mutes in 1935,” and refer to “the secret formula used to line each and every” one. The name is the company’s own: English Wikipedia’s article on the trumpet describes “stone lining” as a trade name of the Humes & Berg company, and its article on mutes says the company holds the trademark on the name “Pixie” for a slim straight mute, a word now widely used for similar mutes by other makers.

The Miller connection is the company’s founding story. Its history says that when Berg was drafted in 1941, Miller told him he would stay home and make mutes for the armed services’ bands instead. NAMM’s oral-history programme, summarising a 2005 interview with Willie’s son Irwin Berg, tells the same story: that Miller ensured his father did not serve in the infantry, but made the mutes for the Army Air Force band and for Navy bands. We give it as the family’s account.

East Chicago, a fire and a second generation.

Berg borrowed from relatives and friends to open a small shop and make mutes full time, the company says, and musicians soon asked him to make other equipment. In 1948 the factory moved across the state line to East Chicago, Indiana, which the website still gave as its home in 2009 and 2012, describing a campus enlarged by later land purchases. In 1962, by the company’s account, the East Chicago factory burned to the ground. Berg’s son Irwin, just finishing his military service, helped him rebuild, and the two developed many new products together. Irwin’s son Mike Berg joined in 1992, and in 2009 and 2012 the website’s history was signed “Irwin and Mike,” who it said ran the company with their staff. The 2009 home page called the firm “a world leader in manufacturing the finest musical instrument protective cases and bags since 1935” and the “home of the world’s famous Stone Lined Mutes.”

By then the catalogue reached well beyond mutes. The 2009 website listed drum cases and bags, band and orchestra instrument cases, music stands and lights, risers and podiums, lockers and cabinets, chairs and carts, and sheet-music folios, and claimed more than 3,000 dealers in the United States and distribution in nearly 50 countries. NAMM listed Irwin Berg as president of “Humes and Berg” when it recorded his interview in July 2005.

Today the company’s online shop is arranged in five groups: mutes, drum cases and bags, Galaxy bags, Tuxedo bags and music stands. Its drum cases come in several lines — moulded Enduro and Enduro Pro hard cases, Econoline cases and traditional vulcanised-fibre cases — and its website features endorsing drummers including Kenny Aronoff, Vinnie Colaiuta, Steve Smith and Ray Luzier.

Brass and woodwind accessories.

A brass or woodwind player’s sound depends on small parts as much as on the instrument. The seven makers here each specialise in one or two of them, and several have changed hands.

Two make mutes. Denis Wick was founded in 1968 by the London Symphony Orchestra trombonist Denis Wick and makes mutes and mouthpieces in Poole, Dorset (“handcrafted in Dorset,” it says); since August 2025 it has been controlled by Music Center of Trento, Italy, Companies House records show. Humes & Berg’s website said in 2012 that Willie Berg founded it in Chicago in 1935 to make Stonelined mutes, and that its factory had been in East Chicago, Indiana, since 1948.

Two make mouthpieces. Otto Link began with Otto Link’s shop in New York in the 1920s; its mouthpieces are made in Elkhart, Indiana, by J.J. Babbitt, which says it acquired the brand in 1977. JodyJazz, founded by the saxophonist Jody Espina in New York in 2000, the company says, makes its mouthpieces in Savannah, Georgia, and owns Chedeville and Rousseau.

Three make reeds and ligatures. Marca was founded in 1957 by Franco Guccini in the Var, in Provence, is run by his grandson and says its reeds are made in France. Rovner, founded by Phil Rovner in 1974, makes its ligatures in Timonium, Maryland (“handmade in the USA,” it says) and has belonged since 2024 to Music Center, which also owns Légère. BG France, a family firm that Franck Bichon founded in 1985 from an idea of his father, the saxophone teacher Serge Bichon, says its ligatures and straps are made in its workshop at Chaponost, near Lyon.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A mute for every effect.

The Stonelined range is broad, and its names read like a dance-band vocabulary. The company’s current listings include the Pixie, which it also calls a “Pocket Mute”; the Mel-O-Wah, or “Whispa Mute”; the Wa-Wah, a Harmon-type mute with an adjustable tone slide; the Wee-Zee, which it recommends for close microphone work; the Cleartone, or “Solotone”; the Velvet-Tone bucket mute; the Mic-A-Cup; and the felt-lined Derby, or hat mute. There are Glenn Miller plunger and short straight mutes, Philharmonic and Symphonic straight mutes, an adjustable mute that converts from straight to cup, a Sh! Sh! practice mute for tuba and a French horn straight mute the company calls non-transposing. Many are listed as made of aluminium alloy. Several names point back to the swing era, and the copy does too: the Velvet-Tone, the company says, “produces extraordinary blends with saxes.”

The company’s website does not say who owns it today or where its products are made now; its earlier history placed the factory in East Chicago, and its case listings say it has been “serving music educators and professionals for over 80 years.” What can be checked is narrower than the legend: a family business, as it described itself, whose Stonelined mutes are still on sale, and whose Pixie name has passed into the general vocabulary of brass players, as Wikipedia’s article on mutes notes.

For a design guide, Humes & Berg shows how a product name can carry a brand when the company name stays in the background. Compare Schilke, another Chicago brass name, and Denis Wick, the British mute and mouthpiece maker. For this guide we use a deep red, black and stone grey with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Humes & Berg’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.