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‘We Help the World Experience the Joy of Making Music’ – Ron Manus Looks Back on a Century of Alfred Music

Christian Wissmuller • AnniversaryArchivesNovember 2022 • November 1, 2022

Few organizations of any type can boast of 100 years of innovation, industry-leading products, and uninterrupted dedication to a clear mission statement. Alfred Music can lay claim to all of those accomplishments – and more – and 2022 has seen the company celebrating its first century of supporting music education through celebrated methods and reference materials geared towards music scholars and instructors of all types and skill levels.

MMR recently chatted with Alfred Music owner and chief business development officer Ron Manus about the significant milestones, commitment to the music industry, and current initiatives that have defined the business and which position Alfred for another 100 years (or more) of continued success.

Let’s talk a bit about the origins of Alfred Music: how did “Manus Music” go about acquiring Alfred & Co. and what was behind the decision to rebrand as “Alfred Music”?

The question I get asked the most is, “Who’s Alfred?” It turns out it is a pretty interesting story.

A little background: my grandfather Sam Manus immigrated to the USA in 1903. He was 20 years old and from Odessa in what was then Russia. He was a violist and played with various symphonies in Boston and New York. In 1922 he started Manus Music based in Tin Pan Alley, focusing primarily on popular sheet music. In 1930 as the depression grabbed hold, most people were struggling, but Sam saw this as an opportunity.

A retailer in NYC called “Orchestral Music Supply” was having financial problems and owed Manus Music more than they could pay. Sam suggested a deal, he forgives the debt, and Sam would pay some additional cash to purchase their other business, which happened to be a small publishing brand, Alfred & Company (named after its owner Alfred Hasse), which had some attractive copyrights. Sam now owned two brands. Instead of keeping both names, he combined them and rebranded them as Alfred Music, in part because he liked that Alfred would always be first alphabetically in the displays. Also, Manus was his truncated name, originally Manneschewitz, which didn’t really roll off the tongue.

Can you describe the original headquarters?

Alfred Music was originally located at 145 W 45th Street, on the 6th floor. We remained there until 1963, when we moved to a much larger space in Port Washington, NY. My Dad said in the early 1950s, there were five employees, including warehousing and shipping. In 1950 the office space was about 2,000 square feet. In 1940, the total income was $15,740, growing to $29,316 by 1949.

Bringing us to the present day, how many are currently employed at Alfred? Can you describe the 2022 headquarters and other facilities?

Alfred moved into the new Peaksware offices in Louisville, Colorado, in 2021. The new Peaksware office has many great features, including music, photography, and video studios; an athletic performance and recovery center; a full hot and cold kitchen; tech-enabled conference rooms; and workspaces suited to a variety of productivity styles. My favorite part is the break room. It’s the largest space in the building, with indoor and outdoor seating. And the best part, it’s got 24/7 access to beer, kombucha, and cold brew. We think It brings a little of the comfort of home into a great work environment. The new offices are over 47,000 square feet, and we have more than 260 employees, stretching across the Peaksware family of companies.

100 years is a significant – and rarely achieved – corporate milestone, but to remain within the same family is even more impressive. Could you walk us through the Manus family involvement in the company, from Sam to Morty and Iris and yourself?

It is fantastic to be a part of this. It’s been a fairly simple timeline. As I mentioned earlier, Sam Manus started the company in 1922 and built it into a nice pop sheet music company. Sam had a stroke in 1949, which threw his son Morty into running the business, having just graduated from college (after serving in the air force during WWII). Morty reinvented the company in the 1950s. Inspired by the need for quality music education products, Morty, a clarinetist and pianist, oversaw the development of an instructional series for accordion, followed by books for guitar, piano, and recorder. Alfred Music was now more than just a pop sheet music publisher; the company was taking its first steps to become the leader in music education. Also, during this time, Morty met Alfred’s bookkeeper, Rose’s daughter Iris and a romance bloomed (see what I did there?). In 1963 the company moved to a much larger facility out on Long Island in Port Washington at 75 Channel Drive.

With Morty and Iris running the business, Alfred grew significantly over the next two decades and eventually exceeded the capacity of its New York headquarters. In 1976, the main office moved to Los Angeles, and the distribution center moved to upstate New York. I shared Iris & Morty’s vision for the company and joined Alfred full-time in 1988, and my older brother Steve joined the company in 1992. During the next decade, Alfred grew internationally, establishing offices in Australia, Germany, Singapore, and the UK. In 2005 Steve and I became the owners. In 2007 Steve began to step away from the business, and in 2009 I became the sole owner.

Alfred Music has long distinguished itself from other print music publications with a strong emphasis on the importance of supporting and encouraging music education. What was behind the company’s focus on academic music studies?

It is about having a healthy ecosystem for our music industry. The better quality of music education we can provide to a beginner, the more musicians we have – not just for this semester but for a lifetime. If we can make those first few months a little better/easier/fun and help get students past the most challenging steps, we have created lifelong musicians. Alfred’s been extremely fortunate to work with incredible authors, composers, arrangers, and editors who created amazing content. And as we know, music makes us smarter, and better students make smarter people who can make better decisions. The world is a better place when we have more musicians. A focus on music education inspired our mission statement; We help the world experience the joy of making music.

 

When looking back at the past 100 years, what would you consider to be some of the most significant developments and achievements at Alfred – groundbreaking releases, corporate partnerships, acquisitions, et cetera?

There are so many, but a few key dates come to mind:

  • 1955 – Alfred’s Basic Guitar

Timing is everything. As mentioned earlier, Morty saw a real opportunity to grow the business by developing quality music education products. In the early 1950s, the company had focused on Accordion music, which, believe it or not, was super-hot then. Morty didn’t love the accordion or its music. He saw guitar music catching on with recent hits by people like Hank Williams, Les Paul, Elmore James, John Lee Hooker, Bill Haley & His Comets. Morty felt a lot of energy and excitement with this new music, so he began working on a guitar method with Alfred d’Auberge, with whom he had written a recorder book. (If you’re getting dizzy with the name ‘Alfred’ you’re not alone.) The timing of the release of the book was perfect, and its release coincided with the birth of Rock music. The book went through several cover changes over the first five years, but the book took off and has been one of our most successful series to this day. The book is now in its third edition, but the basic structure and bones remain intact.

  • 08/01/1981 – Alfred’s Basic Piano Library

In 1981 Alfred had strong instructional methods in most areas, but the one thing we didn’t have was a strong piano method, and Morty focused on solving that problem. He did a lot of research and decided that Alfred needed a piano method focused on an interval approach. Morty needed a team to write this, and he first reached out to Willard A. Palmer to be the main composer and collaborator. Williard then suggested adding Amanda Vick Lethco to the team as she was an influential educator. With that, the team was in place, and over the next ten years, they grew Alfred’s Basic Piano Library to have seven levels, a prep course, and an adult method. The series now has over 250 titles and has been updated several times, but 40 years later, it is still one of the best-selling Piano methods in the world.

  • 01/15/1994 – Earthquake

A funny thing happened on the way to the NAMM show in 1994. Let me set the stage. Most of us know what the week of NAMM is like. For those exhibiting at NAMM, it is a massive undertaking with months of planning. On the Monday of NAMM week, you begin the annual migration to Anaheim by making the final preparations. Because we are within driving distance of the show, we start loading our vehicles on Monday.

It was Monday, January 17th, 1994, just three days until NAMM. I planned to head to the Alfred headquarters in Northridge first to load up the car with new products and begin driving down to set up our booth. At 4:30 am, I awaken to violent shaking. Having grown up in LA, this was nothing new, but it kept going and was more violent than usual. I knew this was a big one when I began climbing over my knocked-over dresser to get to the doorway for safety. After the shaking stops and things seem ok, the next thing is to see if you get the news to find out where the epicenter is and how bad this is. I found out that the earthquake was a 6.7 magnitude and in Northridge, where our offices are. With all the power out, including street lights, it wasn’t easy getting any info, but we soon learned that our building was devastated and was ‘red flagged”, meaning it was unsafe to enter. What happened next is what makes this story one of our greatest moments.

Our team came together, and it was legendary how we all worked closely to come up with solutions. There was never a thought of giving up. We set up our temporary offices in the parking lot next to our building. We moved into four or five trailers with something like 65 people crammed into tight quarters with fancy port-a-potties with running water, and everyone celebrated each other like never before. We built Café Ron next to the trailers and made the best of it. We showed up at the NAMM show with what we had access to and made mock-ups from printouts. If you had come to our booth, you wouldn’t have known there was a problem. In hindsight, we only survived that because of our staff’s fantastic spirit and hard work, who believed in what Alfred does and the importance of music education.

  • 06/01/2005 – Warner Bros Publications Acquisition

In 2004 we heard a rumor that one of our biggest competitors Warner Bros Publications, was on the market. The larger company, Warner Music Group, was re-positioning itself for an IPO, and for whatever reason, they felt like the print division wasn’t an attractive part of that. We filled out the paperwork and NDAs to be in the negotiating pool of companies considering the purchase. At first, we thought, “what are we doing? This is too big for us”, and maybe it was, but it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Warner’s rich history included a collection of many impressive catalogs. Some highlights include the rights to the EMI Catalogue Partnership and the print publishing rights of legendary publishers such as M. Witmark & Sons, Remick Music Corp., and T.B. Harms, Inc. Among the vast EMI holdings are the Robbins and Leo Feist catalogs, film music from United Artists, MGM, and 20th Century Fox, including The Wizard of Oz, Singin’ in the Rain, and many others. It also began a long-term relationship with Warner/Chappell. All of this gave us access to Pop copyrights for the first time since our early days. In addition to all of these Pop copyrights were also iconic educational works like the Suzuki and Belwin catalogs. If all of that wasn’t enough, as we got really serious about finding a way to make this deal work, we began meeting with the staff, which was the tipping point. We met so many passionate and impressive folks that we wanted on our team. We made the deal, and I am happy to say we still have some of those employees working alongside us 17 years later!

The collaboration with Peaksware Holdings is still relatively recent. What was behind that move and how has Alfred Music evolved in the subsequent years?

The partnership with Peaksware really began way back in 1995 when we started licensing content for use in SmartMusic, back then, it was called Vivace. We love partnering with people who bring real innovation and quality. Over the years, we have continued to grow our partnership, and in 2012 Alfred became the distributor for Finale. In 2015, Alfred needed a boost in our technology and infrastructure, we were looking for a partner to join forces with, and our first call was to what is now Peaksware. It has been an excellent partnership for both companies. Alfred’s strength has always been creating the best educational content, which continues to be our focus. Peaksware places a high value on quality content across all of its platforms. When we think about print and digital, we think of the products reinforcing and enhancing each other. Sometimes a printed book is the easiest way to access music, and sometimes you want the digital or the SmartMusic platform’s ability to assess performance and sight reading. All of it makes for a better music education experience and opens the doors to help music makers start a lifetime of making music.

How has Alfred been observing this major milestone?

We’ve been celebrating the 100th anniversary all year! It is crazy, but even though we had 100 years to plan this, the pandemic kind of forced us to celebrate in lots of little ways. Examples include the “Celebrating a Century” ad campaign with the “100” made up of our best-loved print products. Our performance music catalog covers were intentionally designed with the 1920s in mind to honor Alfred Music’s roots. We created a special 100th Anniversary video and a 100th logo that we are showing off in all our marketing in 2022 – website, social media, emails, and a dedicated hero tile/slider on alfred.com. We’ve created pins, notepads, and special signage at events, and one of the most notable events was the AWESOME cake and beer celebration at NAMM.

With a century of celebrated work behind it, what are Alfred Music’s expectations and goals for the coming years?

Alfred will continue to do what it has always done, focusing on making the best educational products. We work in all mediums to deliver our educational message and customize the educational content to take advantage of what each medium offers. We get excited about all the ways of providing cutting-edge content! Looking back, we have used every format and technology available to provide the best experience for the end user. We have used, Flexi-disks, cassettes, CDs, VHS tapes, Blu-ray, and now streaming, and we will continue to evolve. In addition, teaming up with SmartMusic, the first and leading digital education platform that uses assessment, sight reading and features the best play-along tracks you have ever heard. Alfred has thrived for a century by evolving and changing. We think the future will be an exciting place to learn, teach, and play!

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