He hoped to hand England Piano to his son. Now it’s going out of business.
DORAVILLE — No telling how many pianos David England had sold in 52 years, or how many songs had been played on those pianos, or whether any of those chords still resonated in a listener’s mind or heart. Music is a strange and evanescent thing. One moment it rings out all over the room, a living sound you can almost see and almost touch, and then it dissolves into nothing more than a memory.
It was a Wednesday afternoon at England Piano, and outside, a thunderstorm was approaching. Temporary signs said SPACE AVAILABLE and GOING OUT OF BUSINESS and ALL PIANOS MUST GO. Traffic hummed and whined on I-85. Inside the main showroom, where almost 70 pianos remained, England tried to sell one more.
“So you want a name you know,” he said, summarizing what he’d heard from the two customers he was serving, “and you want a shiny one.”
That seemed about right. They were opening a Mediterranean restaurant in Peachtree Corners, and they wanted a grand piano to entertain the guests on Friday and Saturday nights. England stood over a shiny black Yamaha and played a few chords. That song from the musical “Cats.” Andrew Lloyd Webber. Memory, all alone in the moonlight. He played it so easily, so casually, but the chords had a striking power and beauty. One could recall them days later, imagining fanciful possibilities. The showroom walls disintegrating. The ceiling giving way to a clear night sky and a luminous moon.
England stopped playing. The used black Yamaha was priced at $9,490. Out of range. He would have to keep trying things. England was an experienced salesman, but he thought his son, Carder, was a better one. Carder England had been a professional poker player before choosing a more structured life and coming to work with his father. Some of his skills were transferable. He could read a customer’s body language, see clues that others might have missed.
Around the corner, in the front office just off the front lobby, two L-shaped wooden desks sat side-by-side. On the right was David’s. It had stacks of papers and ballpoint pens and a bottle of lemonade and the sense of a place where someone is hard at work in the middle of many jobs. The desk on the left was Carder’s. It was neat and spare, almost empty.
David England tried another song on the Yamaha. A few notes from “My Country, ‘Tis of Thee.” But for these customers, at this price, it was not the right piano.
“You wanna see more?” he asked, with a gentle Southern accent that is less common around metro Atlanta than it used to be.
They did. Perhaps something closer to $5,000. England led them to another room. The main showroom contained evidence of long and continuous occupation. A thin brown carpet reminiscent of another era. A pink While You Were Out notepad that would have felt at home in 1986. Posters on the wall depicting famous pianists from decades past: Elton John, Norah Jones, John Legend.
Long ago, David England had also been a touring musician. He played in church as a boy and played Gospel music with The Marksmen Quartet as a teenager. He also earned money tuning pianos, he said, and at age 17, he decided to go into business. He rented a space in Gwinnett County and opened a piano store.
“My father signed the lease for me,” he said. “And that’s the way we got around it.”
England got married and had two children. He sold a lot of pianos and loaned out other ones in a program that helped schools and colleges and piano teachers. His daughter, a data scientist named Julea Duke, currently serves as executive director of Pianos for Education. His son came to work at England Piano. And as England got older, he made a plan to pass England Piano on to Carder.
Now that was no longer an option, and this didn’t seem like the kind of business one could easily sell. It took a lot of work, for one thing. England sometimes worked 75 or 80 hours a week. Unlike an insurance agency, a piano store had mostly nonrecurring revenue. And there was so much money tied up in inventory. England was 69, ready to take a rest. Which meant that when he and his employees finished liquidating these pianos, England Piano would cease to exist.
England and the two customers returned from the other room. It seemed they had a deal. England introduced them to a reporter from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Mandy Ghayour wasted no time in giving a quote.
“Can you add to the article he’s a wonderful man?” she said.
They went to the lobby to close the sale on a shiny black Sojin. The price was right. To the west, beyond the tall windows, the trees were a deep green, and their branches trembled in the wind. England was printing something, and a signature was required, and when the deal was done, the customers walked out beneath a sign that said Thank You. England went to his office and sat down at his desk.
He made some phone calls and then got to work on an email. The keyboard clattered. For 13 years, Carder worked here, too. They were together at England Piano six days a week. Sometimes they were like boss and employee, England said. Sometimes they were like brothers. And sometimes they were just father and son. They were working on the succession plan.
“But it wasn’t meant to be, evidently,” he said.
About two years ago, when David didn’t hear back from Carder, he went to Carder’s apartment in Cobb County. David banged on the door, but Carder didn’t answer. Eventually, apartment management and the police got involved. Carder was in bed. He had died unexpectedly from a hypertensive heart condition at the age of 36.
Now it was late in the afternoon, and the clouds were darkening, and in his office, David England had deliveries to arrange. Some pianos sold for more than $100,000, and they sounded wonderful. But a technician named William Glover had recently been fixing up a console upright worth closer to $2,000. According to another employee, Gregory Emler, this humble piano was for a woman who could play Debussy’s Clair de lune and “bring a tear to your eye.”
There was no mathematical formula for a thing like that. You never knew how the player and the instrument and the song might join together. What might be created right then and there.
England had other business investments, and Pianos for Education would continue operating, but he would soon have a lot more time to himself. He’d been selling pianos his entire adult life, and he said it would take a few months to figure out who he was without England Piano. Possibilities abounded. So much was still unwritten. There at the shop, as the storm approached and the cars hurtled past, a reporter said goodbye and left the building. The music had stopped. David England was alone, and the place was quiet.
AJC senior editor Charles Minshew contributed to this report.
About the Author
Thomas Lake is a senior reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. His work has been published in The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Sports Illustrated and The Guardian. He's a co-founder of The Lake Family Band. Please email thomas.lake@ajc.com if you'd like to share a story idea.
