 Lee Oskar’s story is the American dream. Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, he left his parents at age 18 to head to America because that was the place to be noticed as a musician. Well, it worked. Oskar, who was a member of the band War, was a big component of several hit songs including “Low Rider” and “Why Can’t We Be Friends?”
Oh yes, let’s not forget about the eponymous harmonica Oskar started. This year, the company celebrates its 25th anniversary.
“I started playing harmonica at the age of 6, so it’s been with me pretty much my entire life,” said Oskar. “My dream was to always be in the music business. I was always frustrated with harmonicas though. I wanted to see them improved in a lot of ways. I experimented with a lot of concepts. Fortunately, I met a manufacturer named Tombo in Japan. We combined my ideas with its know-how. They knew who I was, which was a definite advantage. I flew to Japan a lot, which I paid for by appearing in television commercials there.”
Oskar had no idea his product would be successful, but he admits he had one major thing in his favor: naivety. “If I knew what I know now, it probably would have prevented me from starting the company. Then, people said to me, ‘Are you crazy? A harmonica company?’ I had the ambition and drive to make a great harmonica and yet was naïve about the logistics of a business.”
Oskar wasn’t aware of trade show logistics either. He planned to officially launch his product at the 1983 NAMM show. But he didn’t realize you had to register for a booth well ahead of the show date. So he debuted the product at the 1983 Summer NAMM show in Chicago. But he hit a snag there. Oskar ambitiously built his own Summer NAMM booth out of plywood that was “raggedy.” But he broke the union rules and the union chief spat profanities at Oskar and asked the fire department to have the booth shut down. Oskar had to hammer out an agreement with the union workers, or perhaps his product wouldn’t have launched until 1984.
Some people think there’s little room for improvement or change in harmonicas. Oskar would disagree with that comment. A main thing he set out to make sure was his harmonicas were air tight. “If you have air leakage, the harmonica will be sluggish and the reeds won’t respond well.”
Making the harmonica air tight isn’t easy though. “You don’t want any tolerance or space near the reed. If there’s the slightest burrow, one the eye can hardly see, it can interfere. If the product is not exactly centered, it can interfere. Tombo had to have incredible quality control to make sure the harmonica came out right.”
To celebrate Oskar’s anniversary, (and his 60th birthday, he joked) the company released 8,000 25th Anniversary Major Diatonic Gold Harmonicas in the key of C with gold-plated cover plates. “I didn’t want to come out with something goofy,” said Oskar. “The beauty of it is it’s the same product we’ve been making for 25 years.”
Distribution Deal
One of the biggest moments for the growth of Lee Oskar Harmonicas was its U.S. collaboration with a distributor. “When I first started in 1983, it was a struggle financially,” said Oskar. “Advertising was just too expensive. So I looked for players using our harmonicas. They were like ‘living promoters.’ However, how could I get my product in the stores? I’d go to stores myself. Our very first client was Guitar Center, when it was only one store. It was on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. Daddy’s Junky Music was the next chain I achieved an account with. I had sales reps to help sell our products, but there was a lot of demand for the harmonicas. But there weren’t enough salespeople to feed that demand.”
After working with a few distributors, Oskar asked a trading company who it would recommend to distribute his product. He was told Coast Music. Coast Music is now part of Kaman, which continues to distribute Lee Oskar harmonicas today.
According to Oskar, late Coast Music head John McGraw “put out a lot of fires. He was great friends with Ed Miller, who is the president of Kaman now. John did so much for our business.”
War Stories
Oskar still plays plenty of gigs with other living members of the band War. Five out of seven are alive. Four of those play regular shows together. Oskar is of course one, along with drummer Harold Brown, bassist B.B. Dickerson, and guitarist Howard Scott. However, due to a complicated legal web, Oskar’s band is called The Low Rider Band. The band can not legally call itself War, or refer to itself as having former members of War. There is a band that refers to itself as War because the band’s former manager has rights to the name.
Oskar now lives near Seattle. “The weak economy is going to wake a lot of people up,” said Oskar. “It’s going to be a rough road. But this country is very resilient. People will think of creative ways to survive, whether it’s manufacturing, marketing, or something else. Retail is a difficult business because everyone knows where the store is, but the store owners don’t know who the consumers are until they walk in. Consumers buy the story behind the product, not the product itself. I think harmonicas will become much more popular in stores because store owners can promote many cross-marketing ideas. When the economy is down, you have to think more outside of the box. For example, harmonicas are often marketed with guitars. A retailer could say, ‘But I wonder what that harmonica would sound like through
that octave, flanger, chorus, or reverb pedal?”
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