Merle Johnson (2nd-to-last president of the company) married one of the Blessing daughters, and that retail store/repair shop place (totally separate from the Blessing factory) may (??) have been owned by another sibling. I shouldn't type this, but I'm thinking the grandfather's/founder's name was Emil K. or something, and that he started out in the manufacturing business building valvesets for Conn and possibly off-site. I'm not sure if any of what I just typed is correct...?
Randy Johnson was the last president, and - when they had tough economic times - I believe he possibly didn't have the (lack of) heart to fire anybody. That may be why they eventually had to go out of business and sell their name to St Louis Music Supply. I'm pretty sure the Blessing instruments are now made by Jinbao (or some such..??), and are not even the same tooling.
Blessing would make instruments for other places and would put plenty of stencil names on them. I believe Buescher used to sell instruments to Sears (regular and "Wish Book" catalog listings), but Blessing took that over, because they were cheaper priced, and particularly as Buescher had been bought by Selmer USA. The "Olds" connection was the fact that this mail order place up in New Jersey called N.E.M.C. bought the Olds name (after Selmer USA bought what they wanted of the Olds tooling). N.E.M.C. bought instruments from Blessing in Elkhart (several of the models) and Blessing engraved "Olds" on them for N.E.M.C.
Later, the Accord company (never - to my knowledge - any sort of actual manufacturer) bought some Blessing instruments, and Blessing also made one model of student trumpet for Besson - which Blessing would also sell to Blessing dealers as a model B-135 - which was not listed in their catalog. It was quite a nice instrument, and we used to sell those at our store. It was sort of nice that they didn't appear on the Woodwind/Brasswind website, so we could price them as we wished...but we didn't mark them up very much (probably sold them for $400 or $450) as our store was known for our really competitive prices. I remember it had a gold brass bell and monel pistons. Unlike most of the Blessing trumpets, it had outside threaded top valve caps - which I liked. At the height of Blessing's production, they offered that euphonium, a copy of the King 1140 tuba - which also featured Bauerfeind valves, and even a copy of a traditional wrap 2-rotor Bach 50 bass trombone. I believe it was called a B-98. Joe Marcinkiewicz in Oregon made the rotors for the B-88 and B-98 trombones, which I judged to feature closer tolerances than Bach and Conn rotors. Their marching baritone - in my opinion - was probably the best one that anyone ever made (as far as sonic characteristics), and also featured German valves. Today (Blessing marching baritone), most people would probably prefer to swap the mouthpiece receiver out for one with a large shank.
I couldn't find any Sears catalog pics from later - showing Blessing instruments, but I did find an old 60's catalog page (and picture of an actual instrument) form the Buescher era...and (now, apparently, I've discovered that) Sears continued to purchase Buescher instruments well after the Selmer, USA buyout.
Inflation calculators put a hundred 1965 dollars at roughly a thousand 2023 dollars.
My older brother (considerably older then me) played my Dad's no-name silver-plated metal clarinet (from the 1920's or earlier) in the school band for the first two or three years, and - somewhere? - they later found a wood-or-hard-rubber (??) clarinet for sale for my brother to use - probably for $20 or some such. I recall my Dad (in the early 70's) buying himself a used Buffet (Evette - not R13) wood clarinet for a few hundred dollars...He would play tunes by ear (VERY loudly, but pretty darn well...) before or after dinner...It was loud enough to run me out of the added-on den and back into the old part of the house.
As Sears was fading into the graveyard of time, the last things I remember them selling were early/crappy Chinese "Heimer" instruments.
bloke "who always posts a bunch of weird semi-personal $h!t - which as nothing to do with the topic at hand..."
