Hal Leonard Up a Level

History and Profile

In the late 1930s Harold "Hal" Edstrom, his brother Everett "Leonard" Edstrom and their friend Roger Busdicker had formed a dance band. The Edstroms' father didn't approve of his sons becoming travelling musicians, and did not want them to use the family name. Consequently, Harold and Ev took parts of their names and called the band Hal Leonard. As leader of the Hal Leonard Band, Ev eventually became known as "Hal Leonard."

Hal Leonard - the print publishing company was founded in 1947 after the Hal Leonard Band broke up. At that time Ev started a music store using the Hal Leonard name while Roger and Harold were both directing award -winning high school bands. In those days, most school bands played serious literature, but Harold and Roger had the unique ability, due to their professional experience, to arrange "popular" music for school bands. Soon Band directors across America were requesting their arrangements. They started to mimeograph copies and sell them. They realized that to successfully launch a publishing company, they needed to license songs, so they ventured to New York's Tin Pan Alley in search of copyrights. Gaining an invaluable education in publishing and the rights to "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now," one of the most popular songs of the day. It wasn't long before music publishers in New York were licensing Hal Leonard to create school band arrangements of their songs. Thus began their publishing business and industry.

From the 50's onwards Hal Leonard became innovators in the music publishing industry through their best selling Organ, Piano and Guitar instruction books, introducing millions of people to instant playing success.

In the mid-1960's they began marketing band and choral music to educators by sending recordings (vinyl!) of arrangements through the mail. This concept is still used by virtually every print music publisher in the industry.

Today with more than 100,000 titles available from their catalogue, representing some of the world's best known and most respected artists from the world of popular music, they have become the world leader in the printed music industry.