[If there had ever been a Mayflower for the founding fathers of the American double reed business, surely Robert Gilbert would have been on board. Robert Gilbert's unique place in the musical community results from a combination of marvelous traits. First, his commitment to excellence. If the best isn't up to his standards, Bob will find a way to have something better manufactured. Add in a few other ingredients such as a creative acumen which pervades all aspects of the business, plus an award-winning sense of humor, and I, for one, start to feel that perhaps the Mayflower might begin to seem a bit cramped. I suspect that, after reading the following pages, many readers will agree that the QE II might be one of the few appropriate vessels for transporting such a valuable personage as Mr. Robert D. Gilbert.--Nora Post]
NP: You are certainly one of the luminaries of the double reed business in America, having been involved in it for some thirty-three years. For me, the opportunity to interview you is unique in that, when I stopped to think about it, I realized that I had never interviewed a red-blooded, American-born male. So, it's a first for me, and I want to begin by asking you about the neighborhood of the Gilbert establishment. You and I first met when I was a twenty-year-old student at the University of California. I used to arrive, crash helmet in tow, to have my old (now deceased) Laubin oboe repaired. The neighborhood was arresting, to say the least. Lavender Porsches darted in and out among the larger white Mercedes and pink Rolls cruising out Sunset Boulevard towards La Cienega Boulevard. A life's supply of drive-in taco joints, tire dealers, oriental rug merchants and porno shops, plus the incredible traffic jams when Hollywood High School let out in the afternoon -- not the students, but the passers-by. Then out to the strip, a sharp left at La Cienega, down a wild hill, across the railroad tracks on Santa Monica Boulevard, et voila . . . 943 North La Cienega. But, as Truman Capote once wisely wrote: "Don't let me commence." So, tell me, what's a nice man like you doing in the heart of West Hollywood?
RDG: It was cheap at the time I moved here! That was in 1970; prior to that I had been on LaBrea Avenue for sixteen years. A violinist and her husband owned this building; you know, it isn't everyone who lets you bring a bunch of musicians into their building -- playing day and night -- while they're trying to work.
NP: Let's go back to the very beginning. How did you get into this business in the first place?
RDG: Pure luck. I was an economics student at the University of Southern California, though I also took part in various musical activities at the university. Most evenings were taken up with my dance band, in which I played clarinet and sax. During my senior year, I needed two elective credits to graduate. But I wanted to keep Tuesday and Thursday afternoons free so that I could play golf -- at the time, golf was at least as important as my degree! The only available course was one in the Commerce Department called " Importing and Exporting. " After it was too late to drop the course, I discovered that you actually had to import something in order to pass the class. I was sitting in the Band Office one day, bemoaning my fate, when a bassoonist suggested I import some clarinet reeds from E. Delacroix. I wrote Delacroix, told him I was an importer -- I didn't have a letterhead or anything -- and, to my surprise, he sent me several thousand reeds. The total cost at the time was somewhere between forty and sixty dollars. Dr. Clarence Sawhill was the band director at U.S.C.; when he saw the reeds -- which were not easy to obtain at that time -- he asked me to sell them to the university. As it turned out, I was one of the few in the class to receive any merchandise, and the only one to make a profit. I was absolutely thrilled. However, this elation turned to dismay when I received a final grade of 'D'. To this day, I remember complaining to the professor, whose only reply was: "Don't worry Mr. Gilbert, you'll be a success."
Meanwhile Dr. Sawhill was giving my name to various colleagues as a source for clarinet reeds. He had become President of the College Band Directors National Association, and he gave me a copy of the membership list, suggesting I write personal letters to each one of them. I did this, and over 65% of them responded with orders. Thanks to Sawhill, I was on my way.
By the middle of 1951, I was working half the night to fill and bill orders that my wife would mail the following day. That was the year I officially started my own business, which is to say I rented a room the size of a broom closet from a mouthpiece maker on Hollywood Boulevard!
One of the first people I met in Los Angeles was the oboe maker William Lym. I spent many hours watching him make oboes. He introduced me to Gordon Schoenberg -- the first oboist in the orchestra at Disney Studios. Gordon then introduced me to his clarinet playing colleagues Mitchell Lurie and Dominick Feral Lym also introduced me to Bert Gassman, who was playing first oboe in the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Gassman, in turn, introduced me to the bassoonist Norman Herzberg, and oboists such as Robert Bloom, Harold Gomberg, etc. In all these years, hardly a week has passed that Gordon hasn't stopped by to try new oboes for me. Nor have Mitchell, Dominick, or Norman ever failed me when there have been instruments to be tried or tested. Since his arrival in Los Angeles, William Criss has been another of my friends and advisors. And so it went: Mitchell and Dominick kept introducing me to their students as well as other clarinetists, while Norman introduced me to many fine bassoonists and to his students. It grew and grew.
NP: Who was the most colorful of them all?
RDG: Actually, a well known movie starlet who showed up here one hot summer's afternoon, 98% bare from the waist up, wanting to buy a flute. Though from the double reed player's point of view, the vote probably goes to Harold Gomberg. The New York Philharmonic was playing Hollywood Bowl one Saturday night, and Harold showed up at my place about 1:00 p.m. in the afternoon. For openers, he said, "I'm Gomberg, and I've got five minutes. What do you have to show me?" He stayed five hours, and had tears in his eyes as he left, saying, "Why don't you come to New York and open up a place?"
NP: Great. But let me go back to the logistical end of it for just a moment: when did other people start working for you?
RDG: In the late fifties. In 1960 I had a repairman leave me high and dry. The very next day, William Robinson came walking in to ask whether I could use a repairman. Needless to say, he was immediately pressed into action, and has been here ever since. About four years ago, two very talented young men, Mark Chudnow and Tom Yeah, joined us. Bill took the time to teach them the things he had learned over the years, and now we have three really fine repairmen. Rarely does a new instrument we send out come back. Many famous players tell me that I get the best instruments, but I don't believe it. We send out the best serviced instruments. Period.
NP: Who else works for you?
RDG: Of course, my wife does the bookkeeping. In fact, I never could have gotten started without her; she's been fantastically supportive, and has put up with my working till midnight or one o'clock in the morning all these years. We also have Dawn Evans and Marni Hougham (both accomplished oboists), who take care of customers and get orders out to the 10,000 or more customers we have. Dawn also checks nearly every oboe, oboe d'amour, and English horn before it leaves here.
NP: Can you explain the relative importance of the different aspects of your business?
RDG: Accessories are everything. Our Superieur cane, for instance, is completely hand gouged by one man in France. Each piece is turned three times on the gouging machine, and you can bet your life on the accuracy of the gouge. I get all the Superieur cane produced, and some people would kill to get this cane -- they write me letters that they will sue me unless they get their Superieur "fix".
Cane and accessories are the introduction to people knowing that you have quality materials. Then they try your instruments. And I believe an instrument has to sell itself. I think I told you that I once fell asleep while Bob Bloom and several others were trying oboes. I slept through the whole thing and wound up selling five oboes!
NP: I want to ask you one truly crass question: where's the most money in this business?
RDG: Most of our dollar volume comes from instrument sales, but most of our time is spent selling accessories. As far as I'm concerned, the reed is ninety percent of the instrument; however, this is very idiosyncratic territory.Repair is a losing proposition because it takes too many hours to do a good job. We lose money every year on the repair business. But I don't want an instrument to go out unless it's right, and most people don't realize how long it takes to make a new instrument absolutely airtight.
NP: How about your own accessories, the RDG line?
RDG: I used to import all my accessories from France. They were the state of the art at the time, which was pretty shaky and imprecise. As prices went up, my friends goaded me into doing something better. Another friend of mine was Dr. Frank Desby, a foremost authority on Byzantine music, and an oboist, too. He also happens to be a fantastic physicist, and he designed our shaper tips and gouging machines. Until he came along, no one had ever built a gouging machine that had the same radius on the knife, the guide, and the bed. Things had just been haphazard. People say my gouging machines are the Rolls Royces of gouging machines. Yes, they're the most expensive gouging machines on the market, but they're also the best. Without regrinding blades, for instance, you can get any gouge you want. You can kill yourself moving the carriage of other gouging machines, whereas you can push ours with your little finger. It will gouge to a hundredth of a millimeter accuracy, and I don't know another machine that will do that.
NP: Fantastic. What else do you make?
RDG: Shaper tips, shaper handles, plaques, pre-gougers, cane splitters, and gouging machine blades. These are all made by a Ed Laker here in Southern California. After all these years, I am so happy that I now sell to the French so many of the things I used to purchase from them.
NP: Oh yes... mentioning the French reminds me of travel. What's your typical European trip like?
RDG: The typical trip takes two to three weeks. I visit the de Gourdon, Rigoutat, and Glotin families in France, plus assorted accessory suppliers in France, Switzerland, and Italy. It's usually a day with each to discuss problems, or to ask for more merchandise. Of course there are the joyous moments of feasting... and then sleeping it off! But it's like visiting family... no more looking for merchandise, because that's all settled. Now it's a matter of keeping up old friendships. To wind up a trip, I usually take a busman's holiday to visit T.W. Howarth & Co. in London. I really admire what they've done under really difficult circumstances, given the high cost of imports to England, etc.
NP: Your mention of cane suppliers makes me want to ask your opinion of the present state of the cane business in Europe.
RDG: Well, as more and more condominiums are built along the Riviera and in "oboe-caneland", it gets harder and harder to get cane. You almost have to beg people for it.
NP: What do you think will happen? Do you think there will be any cane in another thirty years?
RDG: I doubt that there will be much commercially available cane. So many people have gone out of that business, and I don't know any new ones who've started in the last twenty years. So many that I used to deal with are gone, just gone... I'm glad I won't be around to have to worry about it!
NP: On that gloomy note, I do believe it's time to change the subject!
The overwhelming majority of professional double reed players use European-made instruments. What, if any, is the American contribution to this business?
RDG: Of course, there has been an American contribution, and by that I mean the oboes made by William Lym and Al Laubin -- the only American makers to make a dent into professional oboe making in this country, and the only ones to win professional acceptance. Lym made about three hundred oboes. In the short time he was on the scene, he managed to build oboes, oboes d'amour, and English horns. He had an excellent reputation, and many players in the film industry used his instruments. It's a shame that he didn't live longer...
Both Bill Lym and Al Laubin were oboe players, and they knew what the players in this country were looking for in an instrument. However they were exceptional. Most American makers have done little more than to try to gain part of the student market -- something the top French makers haven't pursued until recently. In 1967, Rigoutat came out with the RIEC model, and in 1974 the Lorée factory gave us the Cabart '74. These are nearly professional instruments -- and, incidentally, sensational instruments for the money.
While on the subject of instrument makers, I'd like to mention my pet gripe -- poorly finished instruments. Over the years, it's been my experience that makers are usually not that interested in the final finishing of their instruments. I think they just don't have the right people doing it; they don't have players doing the finishing. They can get close, but their thing is to build the instrument. And very few players have been able to keep up their playing and still make instruments -- Al Laubin was one of the few who did. If I may pay him the compliment, you can unpack one of Alain de Gourdon's instruments and it will play. On the other hand, Heckel bassoons leak notoriously when they arrive in this country. Rarely have I seen a new Heckel that will even play. When they are made air-tight, there's a one hundred percent improvement. Of course, the same can be said about many other instruments; the people who make them just aren't players.
NP: But a repairman isn't necessarily a player, either.
RDG: That's where I'm very lucky, because my repairmen do play the instruments, plus we have wonderful players in Hollywood who come by to double check instruments for us. At the 1982 IDRS convention, for instance, we sold every oboe, oboe d'amour and English horn we brought with us. I met so many players I hadn't known before, and they all raved about the instruments. I can only attribute that to my repairmen, especially since other dealers had oboes by the same manufacturers, but simply weren't selling them.
NP: Incidentally, what percentage of your business do double reeds account for?
RDG: About sixty percent. Though this hasn't been a good year for bassoons; flute and bassoon sales have all but died. I really don't know the reason for this... perhaps the flute "fad" has come to an end. Or the makers have priced themselves out of the market. At one time, Haynes and Powell flutes sold for the same price as a professional oboe. Now they're double the price. Personally, I suspect the public has finally had its fill of overpriced flutes -- up to twenty thousand dollars for a gold flute.
NP: Tell me, who manufactured the first oboes you sold?
RDG: Rigoutat. That was in 1951. The first oboe was sold to someone in Idaho, and the first English horn went to Gordon Schoenberg. When the English horn arrived -- in the middle of a dry, hot spell in Los Angeles -- it didn't play one note. The wood had shrunk. My life's savings were tied up in that instrument, and it had taken me about two years just to find Mr. Rigoutat. He was working at his old atelier on rue Polonceau, in Montmartre, with one light bulb above him. Anyway, Gordon arrived, the instrument wouldn't play, and I thought I was going to have a heart attack on the spot! Fortunately, Gordon suggested I postpone the coronary until we got the instrument to operate mechanically. Bill Lym saved me by adjusting the instrument, and repairing a small crack which had developed. So, we got it to work, Gordon bought it, and he's had the same instrument for over thirty years. Before trying that instrument, Gordon taught me a very important lesson. He said that even if he didn't like it, there would be someone who thought it was the greatest instrument they'd ever played. That's held true ever since.
NP: One thing I've never known is how you became the U.S. importer for Rigoutat. How did that come about?
RDG: The early fifties started a boom in the music business which lasted many years. I remember when the Naval Supply Depot in Philadelphia purchased five hundred first line oboes at once. It was incredible. At that time Lorée oboes were not available to me, so the problem was finding another instrument I could sell to professionals. Very few people in this country knew about Rigoutat at that time, though these instruments had a marvelous reputation outside the U. S. -- the only two oboists ever to win first prize at the Munich Competition, for example, play Rigoutat.
Charles Rigoutat sold oboes to me and to the late Edmund Nielsen in Chicago. Now, Rigoutat's son, Roland, and his grandson, Philip, supply me with instruments. I would guess I sell between seventy and eighty Rigoutats a year. It was through the Rigoutat family, as a matter of fact, that I met the de Gourdons. I had never been to the Lorée factory, and Roland Rigoutat took me there some fifteen years ago. Actually, I think Roland took me to Lorée partly in self-defense. I had an agreement with him to buy as many oboes as he would sell me, and I was always complaining that I couldn't get enough. To this day, I've never put a quota on how many Rigoutat or Lorée oboes I buy; I take as many as they can send.
NP: Before we leave the subject of Rigoutat oboes, do a lot of the professional players on the West Coast use them?
RDG: No. I sell more English horns than oboes to the professional players. Recently, though, there's been a big interest in the oboes, probably due to the many tours made by Holliger and Bourgue -- both of whom play Rigoutat.
NP: How do your customers perceive the differences between the Lorée and the Rigoutat instruments?
RDG: As one famous player said, "It's like chocolate and vanilla ice cream -- some prefer one, others prefer the other." Customers are forever asking which one is better, and they may put down one or the other simply because it's quite different from what they are used to playing. Most oboists do not want to take the time to learn to play a new instrument. If they play Brand X, they will try Brand Y with the same reed. So Brand Y -- whatever it is -- doesn't have a chance.
However, there are those who dare to be different. Dick Killmer is one of those people. Besides being a great player, Dick is a real experimenter, and is always willing to try something new.
NP: Do you find him unusual in this?
RDG: Among oboe players, yes. Flute players, for example, are completely different. They thrive on looking for new instruments. There used to be three first line flutes in the world. Now, you have Haynes, Powell, Brannen-Cooper, Cooper, Sheridan, Muramatsu, Sankyo-Prima, etc. They are all top flight instruments selling at approximately the same prices, and being used professionally everywhere. Wouldn't bassoonists love to be in that situation!
NP: I haven't asked you about your experience with European oboes other than Rigoutat and Lorée. What do you think of them?
RDG: Some years ago, I sold quite a few Howarth oboes, though I don't sell them now. They always seemed to have a very good scale. The present owners, Nigel Clark and John Pullen, are close friends. In fact, they distribute all my reedmaking equipment in England. I've seen some of their new instruments, and they seem to be excellent.
In Germany, China, Japan, Taiwan, and the Iron Curtain countries, Marigaux are the best selling French oboes. Yet they never gained any real popularity in this country. Certain German oboes, for instance, are very popular in Germany and other parts of Europe, but we've rarely even seen one here. To make any other oboes and English horns popular in this country would take a massive advertising and selling campaign, such as Muramatsu did with their flutes.
NP: Explain something to me. What advantage is there in buying an instrument from you instead of ordering it directly from Rigoutat or Lorée? After all, I pay more to get something from you and, for all I know, Los Angeles will have been devastated by the Great Quake at exactly the time my oboe needs to have a few pads changed.
RDG: First of all, I've always believed if an oboe can't sell itself to you, it didn't want you to have it anyway! Our instruments sell themselves. The proof of this is to try any instrument you get from France and compare it to one of mine. The French instrument might be a fine instrument, but some customs official might have put it back in its case upside down. Or the wood might have shrunk, and the bore could have changed. Have you ever tried to return something to Europe? The red tape is unbelievable.
NP: I'm really curious about your customers. I have this image of Mitchell Lurie descending down onto your roof from his private plane. How far off am I? And who are some of your more famous customers?
RDG: Well, I sold a bassoon to Bill Cosby, an alto flute to Frank Sinatra, a soprano sax to Buddy Rogers, and a flute to Peter Fonda. David Carradine and Barbara Hershey bought a number of flutes here, Henry Miller bought a clarinet for his son, and Gregor Piatagorsky bought a few clarinets from us for his son-in-law.
NP: How about oboe players?
RDG: Robert Bloom, William Criss, Elaine Douvas, Harold Gomberg, Richard Killmer, Marc Lifschey, John Mack, Evelyn Rothwell, Dan Stolper, Jiri Tancibudek, Alan Vogel, Richard Woodhams -- I could go on and on. There's no way I can ever thank them... they go out and preach the message!
NP: You know, I was certainly hoping that you'd tell me a few RDG stories while we're at this interview. Have you got a story or two for me?
RDG: Sure, though some aren't for the record! But yes, I can tell you a few stories -- one which made me laugh, and another which was a big challenge for me.
About two years ago, I got a call from the Kennedy Center, asking me for a baritone oboe. This was on a Thursday night. They had to have it the following Wednesday morning. I called Alain de Gourdon after midnight our time, and he had just finished one. It was on a plane that afternoon, and we had it here Monday evening. It was serviced and on its way to Washington by Tuesday afternoon, and was delivered there just after 10:00 a.m. Wednesday morning for the first rehearsal of On Your Toes. It turns out that Rogers and Hammerstein had written all their music for a double of oboe, oboe d'amour, English horn, baritone oboe, and (catch this one) celeste. Talk about a double!
Another time, I got a call from a studio for a large number of straight soprano saxophones. I was curious to know whether they were using them for a band scene or something like that. No, they were going to have cars run one over, and they needed a quantity of them for the rehearsals!
NP: If I may, I'd like to leave those saxes behind us, and ask you a few questions about doing business with the Europeans. What, in your opinion, are the differences between how an American and a European does business? For me, I've always been hesitant re: informal handshake deals, and that seems to be de riguer in Europe -- the Don't-Give-Us-Any-Money-We'll- Make-You-The-Oboe handshake. No follow-up correspondence, you can't get a price or a delivery date out of anyone; you are sure, in fact, that the guy who shook your hand is dead. Then, lo and behold, the phone rings at 6:00 a.m. one morning: are you coming to collect the oboe or would like it sent? With the exception of Alain de Gourdon, whom I consider half American anyway, Europeans are famous for not answering their mail; over the years, I've found telegrams and phone calls to be the best way to do business with many of them. I think it takes a certain chameleon-like psychological savoir faire for an American successfully to be able to understand, deal with -- and ultimately appreciate -- this mentality. I suppose it's a bit like learning to love the bomb... What have your best and worst experiences been?
RDG: The best is that most Europeans innately trust people, whereas in the U.S., you have to fill out fifty thousand forms before you can get five cents worth of credit. Seems like a European will give you all the credit in the world as long as you pay your bills. All this without having known you.
NP: Agreed. Here you need a guaranteed reservation at the Hilton; in Europe, you write a note to a hotel, and if you cruise into Bratislava at midnight, the staff is up, saying, "Hello, Mr. Gilbert, your room is ready." And you never sent them a cent.
RDG: Correct. When I first starting working with Rigoutat and Glotin, for instance, I was never asked for bank -- or any other -- references.
NP: How about the exasperating side of doing business with Europeans?
RDG: The exasperating side is that you never quite know what's happening; every day can be a new surprise. If they speak English, they will rarely bother to tell you if they haven't understood something you've said. So, the wrong thing gets sent, or shipments get lost, and everyone blames everyone else -- especially me for having ordered whatever it was in the first place! After thirty-three years, I've found that there's only one thing you can really count on: each month will bring a great deal of confusion from some place or other. Nobody ever says how much of anything they plan to send or when. They send whatever they have, and you can depend on the fact that the things you need the most will take the longest time to get here!
NP: How about contracts?
RDG: I've never had a written contract with a European supplier. Yet, I've never been promised things I didn't get.
NP: How about Americans?
RDG: With Americans, you have to give master orders telling them everything you'll need for the coming year. And if, God forbid, you die in between, they'll bill your heirs at a higher price because you didn't take all that you promised to take. Europeans don't work that way.
NP: To close up, how often does something really nutty happen in your place?
RDG: Oh, I'd say every few days. For sure, at least one crazy thing seems to happen each week. Once I had four contrabassoons in stock. A man called from San Diego to ask if I'd like to pick up a few thousand dollars that night. I asked, "Doing what? Is it legal?" "Yes," he said. "Bring one of those big brown things standing in the corner of your office there. " A friend of mine was in the office, so we drove down to San Diego with the contrabassoon. The man handed me a check, pulled a station wagon up to my car, and put the bassoon in it. I said, "Aren't you going to try it?" He said, "No, no, no." So I asked, "What are you going to do with it?" He said he was finishing a sailboat built in the style of a small tug, and that he wanted to sit on the poopdeck and sail down San Diego Bay playing the contrabassoon.
NP: Did he have any reeds?
RDG: Who knows!!