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.
- 1980s
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.
- 1995
The start of the next verse is taking on Winston Pianos in suburban Adelaide in 1995, before expanding the product range and becoming Winston Music.
- 2015
In 2015, Michael Cleves spots a gap in the shifting musical instrument landscape in Melbourne and opens what becomes Australian Piano Warehouse, which expands into Sydney, Brisbane and Perth and becomes Australia’s No 1 piano retailer.
- 2019
In 2019 the opportunity to revive the legendary Billy Hyde brand in Victoria comes up and the Cleves Family jump at the chance. One store in Melbourne then becomes another in Adelaide and a third in Perth, and Billy Hyde Music is back!
- Today
With Billy Hyde Music now operating in Adelaide and catering to customers for drums, guitars and more, Winston Music returns to being a piano specialist and becomes part of the Australian Piano Warehouse family, and when that showroom moves next door to Billy Hyde Music in the city, things go full circle and Winston Pianos returns in its original location as a pre-loved piano specialist.
And so ends what may be the first album in the Dale Cleves Music Group history, with many more hits sure to come.
