Bob Taylor of Taylor Guitars recently released a YouTube video chronicling his involvement with ebony and the West African country of Cameroon. Taylor Guitars is one of the largest importers of ebony in the world because the company makes not only its own guitars with it, but supplies other guitar and violin makers as well. In fact, to efficiently and legally harvest ebony from Cameroon, Taylor partnered with another company to co-purchase a Cameroonian ebony mill. It was here that Bob discovered the way to fuse good business with responsible forestry.

There are plenty of online music services to choose from these days, many of them household names: iTunes, Amazon, Napster, Rhapsody, Pandora, and, most recently, Spotify.

Recently we have had to endure the passing of two legendary figures in the music industry. Earl Scruggs (born 1924) and Jim Marshall (born 1923) were both household names, depending on whether you played banjo or electric guitar. (Or both, as I do.) Despite their obvious differences—one being an American folk artist, the other a British amp manufacturer—they had many things in common: humble beginnings, a sense of humility that they kept throughout their entire lives, and the ability to create a singular sound that musicians couldn’t live without once they heard it.

I used to work with a fellow editor who had a comeback for almost any occasion. Once I apologized to him for getting impatient. He quipped, “Don’t apologize; buy me something.” Whenever we were instructed from on high to complete some insanely difficult task in a ridiculously short amount of time, he would query, “Do they want it right? Or do they want it right now?” But my favorite little meme he introduced me to (now on the web in endless variations) was the famous “Two out of three” rule.

When CDs came onto the scene circa 1983, they answered a true calling, delivering noiseless, high-fidelity audio to discerning consumers in a nonlinear format. A CD wouldn’t degrade over time simply by playing it back either, which was untrue of both vinyl and magnetic tape. Listeners went through culture shock when they sat next to a set of speakers and heard nothing—as in true, sonic silence—before the first note of music sounded. Only the terminally geeky and audiophile party-poopers groused about how “digital was sterile” or that better fidelity was actually achievable through analog means, assuming your turntable cost more than the GDP of a small country. For everyone else, CDs, and the era of digital audio democratization they heralded, were a godsend.

Every one of us would like to think of himself or herself as a professional, or at least qualified as such, whether or not we’ve committed our passion to a marriage of commerce and talent. But the measure of professionalism is not limited to talent. It’s how you comport yourself on the gig or session. And it’s knowing how to relate to the leader, which may require a well–lived life’s worth of experience to draw from.

There was a time when, if you were advertising for a musician, all you had to do was print the magic phrase “major label interest,” and the world would beat a path to your door—if you were foolish enough to include your home address in the ad. Once the masses arrived, you could qualify the statement with, “Well, there’s no money yet, and we have to travel far distances and play long hours at obscure and under-attended venues, but we have major label interest.” And to a person, the teeming throngs would cry, “Sign me up!”