COLUMN: Carillon Flashback December 13, 1972 – Former band enjoying recording studio success

A casual passer-by and motorists whizzing by on the four-lane main artery would probably miss the small sign identifying several offices at 654 King Edward Street in Winnipeg. They would likely never see the unimpressive yellow brick building; it’s just one more drab industrial site in busy St James.

After all, who would expect to find one of Canada’s best equipped recording studios in that area. But that’s just what Century 21 Studios is; in fact, it’s the major Canadian recording studio west of Toronto.

Everyone connected with this studio is young; no one is over 30 and the youngest of the four genial partners in the business is 25. But, youth has never stood in the way of the tremendous business success enjoyed the past four years by brothers John and Harry Hildebrand and Ron and Ted Paley.

Young people especially will remember them well, as the quartet became one of Winnipeg’s best known musical rock groups, when they plied the city’s nightclub and hotel circuit as the Eternals. The Eternals as a performing group are practically finished, but the members themselves are doing better than they hoped for, ever since they chose to go into the recording industry four years ago, instead of opening fried chicken outlets.

All are well known as former southeastern Manitobans – the Hildebrand brothers grew up in Steinbach, while Ron and Ted hail from Rosa – but their climb to success in a highly sophisticated and technical arena seems even more impressive than the usual country-boys-who-made-it-big-in-the-city theme.

Successful business ventures usually prosper because they fill a need or provide a product or service in demand. Century 21 fits this pattern exactly.

“By 1968, we figured we had made it as big as we possibly could as musicians,” Harry recalls. “We were pretty good, but not good enough to have made it across the country.”

Not that they were starving as the Eternals. By the end of 1968, they were drawing top dollars in Winnipeg and other major cities across Canada. Their demands of $650 and up per week were being met and they had every reason to look back with pride on their three-year professional music career.

Century 21 was born that year, with the pooling of their savings and sympathetic bankers, and the four went into business. None at the time had any idea of how well they’d do, and besides, they could always fall back on their playing abilities if the new venture failed.

Their success as the Eternals helped in obtaining initial recording contracts and the dozens of contracts they had made as a rock group began to pay off.

A successful commercial for Metro Transit in Winnipeg helped Century 21 become more than just a recording studio. For while a dozen or so other studios record professionally across the country, there is probably no other studio in Canada that will compose a commercial, write both words and music, and then finally hire the musicians and record the finished product.

The young partners at first hadn’t considered that commercials would account for much business, but now they earn fully 25 percent of all revenue from that source. Production of commercials also resulted in specialization at the studio.

Most of the sidelines at Century 21 came about almost by accident or because there just wasn’t enough recording work in the Winnipeg area to keep four people busy. John now does most of the recording work and Harry works largely on production of commercials, while doing some recording as well. Ron, with a teaching and banking background, sells professional studio equipment, while Ted sells studio recording time, records and commercials.

John Hildebrand speaks enthusiastically about future prospects for Century 21.

“Our expectations have been more than satisfied and we are looking at increasing both in size and scope.”

That things are going well is easily noticed around the studio, where a major renovation is nearly completed and Harry is talking about buying a new Corvette, something he would not have considered four years ago.

Four years ago you had to go east for even the simplest of recording jobs. Century 21 has become big business and stands to get even bigger.

A recent shot in the arm was a federal government ruling that 30 percent of all radio music broadcast must be Canadian.

One thing is leading to another and, in 1971, the studio did a lot of promotional work for the Saskatchewan government, which later led to business from other provincial governments.

– with files from Peter Dyck