Music store owner leaves 60-year legacy

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This article was published 13/05/2021 (1457 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Dick Hildebrand, the mild-mannered shopkeeper who kindled a love of music in Manitobans for six decades, died last week at his home in Steinbach. He was 83.

“He had a love for people, a love for music, a love for Jesus, and kind of mixed them all together through the store,” son Jerry Hildebrand said.

Born in Russia in 1938, Dick Hildebrand’s love of music was seeded in Bible school. He became a Canadian citizen in 1955.

In the late 1950s, Hildebrand started selling wristwatches out of his father’s garage, Hildebrand’s Service. In 1960, he founded Hildebrand’s Bargain Store at 359 Main Street.

“He carried everything,” Jerry said, from clothing to dry goods to jewelry to musical instruments.

In the 1960s, an Italian instrument manufacturer put Hildebrand’s name on a line of accordions.

In 1970, the store moved into a larger space at 336 Main Street and rebranded as Hildebrand’s Music and Jewellery. He stocked guitars, organs, and mandolins, and later branched out into electric instruments. Hildebrand was tone deaf, relying on a tuner to tune the instruments displayed in his store.

Every Saturday evening, the store’s large basement was transformed into a free performance venue for local musicians.

“Over the years it grew, and I think at the end of it was three or four hundred people that would show up on a Saturday night. It became an event for the town,” Jerry said.

In 1986, Johnny Cash’s youngest sister, Joanne Cash Yates, stopped by to perform a set of gospel songs with her husband, Harry Yates.

Hildebrand expanded in the 1970s, opening three music stores in Winnipeg which he ran until the following decade, when a combination of urban infrastructure changes and skyrocketing interest rates made staying in the Winnipeg market untenable.

In 1994, Hildebrand moved his Steinbach store to Portage la Prairie. In 2016, he closed the Portage store and returned to downtown Steinbach, setting up shop at 316 Main Street, where the business remains today.

Hildebrand’s last day of work at the store was Nov. 7, 2020, when code red pandemic restrictions prompted a two-month shutdown.

In January, Jerry and his son, Eric, began running the store part-time. Eric, a musician and carpenter, will carry on running the store full-time starting in July.

When he wasn’t behind the counter, Dick Hildebrand could often be found at a local care home, playing his keyboard and singing for residents.