Albert & Son (Aus)

J. Albert & Son
J. Albert & Son was founded by Jacques Albert, a Swiss-born music teacher who migrated to Australia in 1884.

Jacques Albert and his son Michel Francois (Frank) established J. Albert & Son in 1890 when they began to import Violins. In the early 1900's J. Albert & Son became one of the leading sheet music printers in Australia, and they also opened a music shop that was to become the biggest in Australia. Through this shop they started to distribute all sorts of musical instruments, and as well as distributing other peoples brands, they started to use their own brand names, (probably the most famous being Boomerang which they used on Mouth Organs), too.

The next part of the enterprise was to start a music publishing company called Albert Music; and then onto starting their own radio stations, and by this time they had a pretty large musical empire in Australia. Over the years the firm stayed in the Albert family control through 5 generations but in 2016 the firm was sold to the Australian music publishing company, BMG.

When they were distributing instruments though, the catalogue included Ukuleles imported from Hawaii made by firms like the Hawaiian Mahogany Co. and Mossman, and Banjoleles from George Houghton & Sons in the UK.