An airport piano was filthy and out of tune. He fixed it during a layover

Josiah Jackson was on his way to Florida with friends three years ago when he spotted a baby grand piano at Chicago O’Hare International Airport.

“It was a public piano and anyone could play it,” said Jackson, explaining that the piano was located near Gate C-17, next to the Beaudevin Wine Bar.

Jackson, then 18, had played the piano since age 4 and he’d recently started his own piano-tuning business in Grand Rapids, Michigan. When his friends convinced him to play a tune during their layover, he cringed after only a few notes.

“It was absolutely the worst piano I have ever played,” said Jackson, now 21. “It was embarrassingly bad – the keys were sticky and every note sounded terrible.”

“I thought, ‘One day, I’m going to come back to the airport to tune this piano for free and redeem myself,’ ” he said.

He recently got his chance. And a video he posted on YouTube last month showing how he cleaned and tuned the piano has more than 1.3 million views.

Jackson’s plan was put into action last year, a few months before a summer trip to Guatemala to help a church group build housing for people in need. He said he noticed that the return flight he was thinking of booking stopped in Chicago.

“I decided this it – I’m going to tune that piano,” he said.

After contacting the airport to make sure the piano was still there, he arranged with a supervisor at HMSHost, the company that provides food and beverage services at O’Hare, to mail his piano-tuning equipment to the airport from Michigan about a week before his trip.

“Everyone was all in on me tuning the piano, but even though I was just taking the basics, I didn’t want any problems going through security,” Jackson explained.

He then scheduled an eight-hour layover at O’Hare during his July 22 return flight.

“When I got there, I let the HMS office know, and they met me at the piano with my equipment,” he said. “As soon as I saw the piano, I knew I was in for a long day. It looked even worse than before.”

The piano – a Kimball baby grand – was in such disrepair that it was roped off so nobody could play it, Jackson said. It was so sticky and dirty that it took him a while to open it up.

“It was in very rough shape – dust was everywhere, and there was a gluey substance under the keys that prevented them from working,” he said. “I’d never seen anything like it.”

Jackson used a vacuum attachment to suck up the piles of dust, then he pried out the 88 keys and cleaned them one by one with a damp cloth. He scraped up the gummy muck that was stuck inside, and used a rag to wipe the interior of the piano.

“I figured out the reason the piano was such a sticky mess was because it was next to a bar, and people had spilled their drinks on the keys,” he said. “It was definitely the biggest challenge I’ve ever had.”

He said he was 15 when he decided to learn the art of keeping a piano in tune.

“I’ve always loved playing, and I used to dream of traveling the world as a pianist, Jackson said. “But then when I performed in high school, I found out that I didn’t enjoy the pressure. So I decided to find another career that would keep me around pianos.”

When a local piano tuner agreed that he could shadow him on the job for a day, Jackson said he knew he’d found his calling.

“I thought it was such a cool, satisfying thing to do,” he said. “I loved seeing and hearing the transformation of each piano.”

At age 17, he said he decided to call himself “The Piano Doctor” and post on YouTube about the various pianos he’d tuned or repaired. He now has 724,000 subscribers.

At the Chicago O’Hare airport, Jackson sat on the floor in the busy C concourse to patiently clean the hammers and keys. It took him seven hours, with no time for a lunch break, he said.

“That left me with about 45 minutes before I’d have to race to catch my flight,” he said. “So I did the fastest tuning I have ever done.”

When he was finished, he barely had time to admire his work. But he had achieved his goal: The piano was again ready to be played by anyone with a few minutes to spare between flights.

“Even with a quick tuning, the piano actually sounded really good,” Jackson said. “I sat down and played ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ by Jarrod Radnich. That’s the piece that inspired me to take up the piano when I was younger.”

He said he left a sign on the piano before he left – “No drinks near piano, please!” – then the airline allowed him to fly home with his tuning equipment.

Representatives from HMSHost didn’t respond to requests for comment from The Washington Post about Jackson’s efforts.

After he posted his YouTube video in December, WBBM Newsradio of Chicago picked up the story. So far, people have left more than 1,500 comments on Jackson’s video.

“I work for United at Chicago O’Hare, and I frequently walk past this piano at C17,” one person wrote. “I want to let you know that passengers and even flight crew members frequently play music on it now! Thank you for bringing a new life to the piano!”

“I missed a connecting flight and got stuck in O’Hare overnight,” another person commented. “Unable to sleep, I started walking around and eventually stumbled upon that piano, which kept me entertained for hours. Love it.”

“Dude, I literally played on this exact one before my flight back to Germany after my exchange year in the US!” another YouTuber wrote. “Seeing it being restored genuinely made my heart happy. Thank you so much!”

Jackson said he’s grateful for so much positive response.

“I’m thrilled that people are playing the piano again,” he said. “Piano tuners are becoming more and more rare, and I’m one of the few people who could fix it. It was just a cool community thing to do.”