The year was 1964. The Beatles were tearing up the Australian music charts with hits like ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘I Saw Her Standing There’. Elvis, The Animals, Roy Orbison and Australia’s own Billy Thorpe were up there as well. And a young 24 year old by the name of Dale Cleves opened a little music store in the country town of Mt Gambier, South Australia.
Music was in his blood. His grandfather Frederick was an entertainer and promoter in the early 1900s, his grandmother Jessie was a pianist and singer, and his father Frank was a professional drummer and band manager who went on to be known as ‘South Australia’s King of Swing’.
So it was probably inevitable Dale would follow in such musical footsteps.
Mt Gambier may be most famous for its Blue Lake, but in that part of the world, to say the Cleves family name is equally famous and even legendary is probably not an overstatement. The Generations of Jazz festival he co-founded in 1982 is one of the region’s biggest events attracting musicians from all over Australia, and in 2012, Dale himself was awarded an Order of Australia medal for service to the tourism and hospitality industry, and to music.
Anyone who’s ever been to the region will also almost certainly be familiar with The Barn Palais - today it’s a restaurant famous for its fine dining and in particular its mouth-watering steaks, but in its day it was an entertainment venue with the who’s who of the Australian music industry passing through over the years. More recently, the Cleves family have added accommodation and a catering business but its musical heritage is pretty much legendary.
Music is in his blood. He’s definitely the real deal.
And the first verse was written.
It starts with that single store in Mt Gambier, continues with the next verse, opening another Dale Cleves Music store across the Victorian border in nearby Warrnambool in the 1980s, but it’s a little later when things get even more interesting and his son Michael joins in to play his part in what turns out to be a pretty epic chorus.
It’s the 1990s when the Cleves family not only purchase Winston Music in the suburbs of Adelaide but set about reinventing it. The group quickly becomes Yamaha Music Australia’s biggest national piano account, and the stage is set for what comes next.
In 2015, Michael Cleves spots a gap in the shifting musical instrument landscape in Melbourne, Victoria, and opens what is initially a temporary, ‘pop up’ piano store on the edge of the CBD. The concept is simple: Big range. Great warehouse direct prices. Keep it simple. And the Australian Piano Warehouse business begins. Before long the temporary store is a permanent store, and soon after that, the concept goes national with stores across Australia and Australian Piano Warehouse becomes Australia’s No 1 piano retailer.
In 2019 the opportunity to revive the legendary Billy Hyde brand in Victoria comes up and the Cleves Family jump at the chance. They open a superstore in Melbourne and it’s a hit with the local market, instantly setting the standard for musical instruments retailing in Australia.
Not long after that, a similar opportunity comes up with Kosmic Sound in Perth, Western Australia. Having previously been voted one of the best musical instrument stores in the world, bringing Kosmic back to its former glory was always going to be hard work, and it’s made even more challenging when the grand opening just happens to coincide with the Covid-19 pandemic hitting Australia. Somehow, against the odds, the team rally and open at a time when so many other retailers are closing, and again, the musicians of Perth embrace the new business. And if you’ve ever seen the store, you’d know why - it’s pretty amazing.
And so, ends what may be the first song, or perhaps the first album, in the Dale Cleves Music Group history, with many more hits sure to come.
