The Jim Dunlop company has provided musicians with so many amazing tools for so long that it’s hard to remember a time when that wasn’t the case. It’s also easy to forget that this corporation doesn’t just have a man’s name—it was actually named after a man. And 50 years ago that man was perceptive enough to see a need in the marketplace, smart enough to be able to design and build a product to fill that need, and fearless enough to think that he could sell that product to millions of musicians.

It was indeed that fearless and adventurous spirit that brought Jim Dunlop to the US from Canada in the 1960s. “I got a postcard from a friend of mine,” says Dunlop. “It had a picture of a bikini-clad lady and said it was 90 degrees in Muscle Beach. It was 12 degrees below in Ottawa. I decided I’m getting the hell out of here. So we packed up. My wife was seven months pregnant at the time. To get across the border, you had to prove you had $1,600 in your bank account. I only had $600 in the bank at that time, so I went straight to the credit union and borrowed $1,000. Then I went to the American consulate general in Montreal, showed them the $1,600 in my account, and they stamped my papers and said, ‘You’re free to go.’ I went right back to the credit union and paid the $1,000 back in full, and we crossed the border with $600 and a final destination: San Francisco.”