the iowa great lakes recording company, inc. - or simply igl - was founded by roger blunt, cliff plagman and john senn. senn became acquainted with blunt and plagman through a bandmate, chuck maranell, who worked at the same hardware store with the pair in 1960. blunt owned a reel to reel tape recorder and had recorded a band whose members included senn and maranell in 1961. due to the less than acceptable quality of this recording, blunt, along with his tape recorder, accompanied the group to a radio station in minnesota to record the group in what was hoped to be a better environment for such an endeavor. this event planted the idea for what became igl.