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Don Agard lived in the Cleveland Ohio area, and as a youth (age 11) he
worked for F. A. Reynolds on his farm (yes he had a farm at the same time
as his brass company there). During times when there wasn't much work to
do on the farm, he sometimes worked in the brass plant. In 1947 Mr.
Reynolds sold the company to the Roth company. Reynolds came to Olds in
LA Calif at that time. F. A.
Reynolds and his brother Harper together designed the Ambassador horns,
and they were introduced in 1948. Don felt that the 28xxx serial numbers I've
seen on these cornets had to be some of the very first Ambassadors.
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In 1951 Mr. Reynolds was on a business trip to Cleveland, and he invited
Don to come to LA to work at Olds. In 1952 Don took him up on the
offer. Don had an engineering degree and was basically a "go-fer" at
first.
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In 1954 Don had responsibility for two key projects. According to Don,
trombones and
trumpet/cornets had two separate serial number sequences until 1954! He
says that trombones were around 45,000 - 48,000, and trumpets were around
68000 (though I don't know for sure how solid those numbers are). He says
that in January 1954, the sequence was started anew at 100,000 including
both. Don reports that he was the person responsible for making that happen.
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His other 1954 project was the move to Fullerton. They moved the
operation
between March and July. It sounds like it was a painful, stressful
process. After they arrived at Fullerton, it took a while to get things
changed so that horns were labeled as Fullerton.
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Meanwhile, Reynolds had been purchased by Roth. The general manager at
one point, a Mr. Caldwell, was an Abilene native, and he opened an operation
in Abilene. It turned out to be a difficult thing to keep going because
there was no brass instrument industry in Abilene from which they could draw
experienced employees, and so the Abilene operation never was as
successful as hoped. Maybe that explains why later on, Olds was making parts in
Fullerton and shipping them to Abilene for assembly (we didn't discuss
that, just my conjecture). Anyway according to Agard, RMC was "Richards
Music Corp" (if I got it right) and apparently they purchased Reynolds
around 1960 or so. Then in 1964 CMI / Norlin acquired Reynolds and Olds.
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He wasn't sure exactly when the Opera was introduced, just confirmed the
last half of the 50's.
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He spoke of a day in April 1968, when Herb Alpert and the TJB came to the
Fullerton plant, with a network TV crew, to tape a two minute introduction
/ trailer for a show. They spent 8 hrs at the plant, just looking for
spontaneous situations. At one point there was a worker hammering on a
bell flare / neck joint on a mandrel, and the band started playing along
with him. It brought the whole plant to a standstill! Alpert was a
confirmed Benge player (and I guess endorser), though they tried to
persuade him to take up an Olds.
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He also mentioned that the Clark Terry model trumpet was introduced in
1977. Like everyone else, he speaks very highly of Clark. Says he's a
very personable and funny guy.
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