The success story that is Hal Leonard

Born of the inspiration of three Winona men, Hal Leonard is a significant local business and a major player in the international music scene.

The Hal Leonard Orchestra

Brothers Everett Leonard Edstrom and Harold Edstrom met Roger Busdicker at Winona State Teachers College.

The Edstroms started the school’s first marching band program while concurrently directing the Mabel High School band.

They never entered a band in a contest without receiving an “A” rating or better, and the Mabel band won a national music competition featuring high schools from across the United States.

Harold graduated in 1936 and taught at Winona Senior High School and started the marching band program there.

He also helped to start the band program at St. Stanislaus School.

At the same time, Ev performed with the Kampus Kings, a popular musical group that appeared at college social events.

Under his direction, the band expanded, began touring and was renamed the Hal Leonard Orchestra.

The name was derived from those of Harold (Hal) and Leonard (Ev’s middle name).

This was necessary because of concern that their father, Ernie, might not approve of attaching the family name to something as “questionable” a dance band.

“In 1937, we started becoming a commercial dance band,” said Busdicker, who played clarinet and saxophone.

“We covered a fourstate area — Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa and Wisconsin.

“We did it primarily on weekends when most of the ballrooms were open,” he said.

“As we got more popular, there were more dances in the week.” Busdicker said that mostly young people came to these dances, anywhere from 75 to 100 or 200 to 300, depending on the dance hall.

“One of our competitors was Lawrence Welk,” he said.

“He started going big time — going east and hitting the major ballrooms like the Arigone and Trianon in Chicago.We knew Lawrence well being in the same territory, and he recommended Hal Leonard to the Chicago ballrooms, and that was the first step to the band going up the ladder.” Busdicker said that swing music was “the in thing” then.

“It was one of the many cycles that music goes through — being in it I think it was one of the best,” he said.

“There were some fine musicians in the big bands.” Jo Edstrom, Harold’s widow, said it’s unfortunate that there are no recordings of the band.

“Ev was the front man, the lead trumpeter,” Busdicker said.

Ev, known professionally as Hal Leonard, achieved national prominence with the orchestra and its “band within a band,” the Triple Tonguing Trumpet Trio, in which he played.

Featured on both network radio broadcasts and the covers of national music magazines, Hal Leonard was the scheduled headliner at the nation’s top dance venue, Chicago’s Trianon Ballroom, on Dec. 7, 1941.

With the coming of World War II, “the draft broke up the band,” Busdicker said.

“Ev worked in a Navy band, and I went into the Army Air Force, doing navigation and navigation instruction.”

Hal Leonard Publishing

After the war, Busdicker and the Edstroms took jobs as music teachers, a move that would lead to the founding of what would become the world’s largest sheet music publisher.

At that time, the only music available for high school bands was “serious literature,” Busdicker said.

To give their students something fresh to play, Harold began arranging popular music.

When other band directors heard the arrangements and started asking for copies, the publishing enterprise was born, beginning with the sale of a few copies produced on a mimeograph machine.

“In 1947, we dreamed up Hal Leonard Pub and I left teaching at Winona State to go into the business full time,” Busdicker said.

“I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now” was the first song licensed by the company, the first in a catalogue that would eventually include the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Marley and Woody Herman.

“At that time, publishers were very jealous of their copyrights, and it was the first step,” Busdicker said.

The trio established several other businesses, including Edstrom Photo Studio, Edstrom Music, Edstrom Telephone and Sound and Edstrom Realty.

In the early days of the business, the Edstroms ran the retail music store, and Busdicker ran Hal Leonard, which were in the same building.

“We hired two or three arrangers, and Harold supervised their work,” Busdicker said.

“Soon it required more man power, and the home organ market was dwindling away — we thought more effort should go into the Hal Leonard operation.” At that point, Ev took charge of the remaining side businesses and Harold and Roger focused on publishing.

The company grows

The company expanded into choral arrangements and in the 1950s came out with the Pointer System, an instructional package for learning to play the home organ.

“All three of them developed the Pointer System, an easy play method for playing the organ, which helped sell organs because, with this system people, could play right away,” Jo Edstrom said.

Busdicker said their rising success was “primarily a matter of developing a new product and then marketing it ... we were able to come up with some unique new ideas and products that kept things going.”

Most of the Hal Leonard products were in the educational music field designed to teach, and, later, they branched off into arranging for different instruments and choirs.

“Harold was a good business man, Ev’s forte was in sales — he was an excellent salesman,” Busdicker said.

“My forte was in product development and marketing.” In 1968, the retail store was sold and the new Hal Leonard building was built at 960 E. 11th St., where it still stands.

“When they realized they were going places, they got a bigger store,” Jo Edstrom said.

Hal Leonard and its employees enriched the economic and musical life of Winona.

“It was a good business for a small community like this,” Busdicker said.

“Both Ev and I played in the municipal band almost as long as Harold directed it, (30 years) as well as many employees because they were musicians,” he said.

“It was a labor of love — we were all active in music activities in town.

“We had excellent employee relations and it was a good place to work,” Busdicker said.

“I get that feedback even now talking to people.

I was president of the company for 40 years, and my door was always open.

I was on a first-name basis with all the employees, and it was a big happy family.” Securing reprint rights to music was “the life blood of our business,” he said.

“At one point, we had the had the exclusive rights to the Beatles — that was a major step.

And there were others that were big in the music industry.

Mardak takes over

Busdicker and his partners sold their interest to Keith Mardak of Milwaukee in 1985.

Busdicker said that Mardak has “very definitely maintained the standards” he and the Edstroms established.

Describing Mardak, Busdicker said, “He’s a real leader and pretty much followed the principles we had followed while he was still working for us. We gave him more and more management authority ... he’s an excellent businessman, and we felt he was the man to continue.”

Mardak said he’d learned the business from the best.

“First of all, Harold, Roger and Ev were honest, and I learned from them to run an honest business,” Mardak said.

“(For example) since we manage print rights, we get audited from time to time, and we’ve been told by the Disney auditors that we’re the best audit they’ve done.”

Over the next six years, Hal Leonard acquired printing rights from five major companies, which gradually increased the business’s total titles.

Hal Leonard surpassed all others to become the world’s largest print music publisher in 1987, a position it has maintained.

November 1991 brought a new 50,000- square-foot warehousing center addition at the Winona facility that brings total square footage to more than 220,000.

In June 1996, Hal Leonard and Music Sales formed Hal Leonard Europe, a joint venture in music print publishing and distribution in the European Common Market.

“We’re proud to have our distribution and administration offices in Winona,” Mardak said.

There are 180 employees in Winona and 135 in Milwaukee, with additional smaller offices in New York, London, Australia, Holland and Hong Kong.

“We have a one-woman office in Hong Kong that does sales, marketing and translations for local Chinese artists,” he said.

“Asia could become an important area for us in time.” Mardak said he maintains regular contact with Roger Busdicker, who often gives him feedback on new products.

Mardak’s respect for his three mentors is obvious.

“They always ran business above board,” he said. “They were cautious — we talked about important decisions a long time and weighed everything very carefully.”

Mardak described each man’s strengths: “Harold had the music sensibilities, Roger, the practical business logic — he got to know the production and printing side of the business — and Ev was the taskmaster — he’d force us to make a decision if need be.”

“They had a lot of fun in the business,” Mardak said. “We had great times when I came to Winona. They were always funloving, good guys to be around.”

He expects the Hal Leonard tradition to continue in southeastern Minnesota.

“I think Winona is a great town,” he said.

“We have a great pool of people working for us there, and we want to continue to be an important part of the community there. We look forward to Hal Leonard growing in Winona.”