We mourn the passing of Mel Cheren
Friday December 7, 2007
It is with much sadness that we announce the passing of a true legend Mel Cheren. A founder of West End Records, Mel ushered in the disco generation and was involved with the monumental Paradise Garage. He is both a role model and a truly nice guy who always wanted everyone to be part of the party.
Comments
Mel Cheren could be called something that you rarely heard in the music business: A true Mensch. He will be sadly missed, but hopefully will soon begin creating the ultimate dance club – Disco Heaven. Thanks for loving and promoting OUR music as only you could do it, Mel.
While Mel and I never worked together, we had been friends dating to the early 70’s. Wow! Truly one of a kind, I will miss him, his sometimes repetitive stories and his many kindnesses and generosities. Mostly, though, I am filled with gratitude for having known him and been among the many who called him “friend.” I wish him wonder and peace in his journeys beyond.
I am sadder than most this day, because I just learned that one of the people who believed in me most when I started this crazy musical journey, just passed away. I last spoke to Mel Cheren, as recently as a few months ago, and he was asking me where the hell I’d been. Mel wasn’t much for the internet, and a friend should not have to keep up with you on the internet.
I am pissed at myself because that is what my life has become…Keep up with me on the internet, because I am doing so many things. I keep telling myself, slow down, take time to vibe with people. Get in contact with people you have been wanting to reach out to. Don’t put it off until tomorrow.
I had been meaning to call Mel and see what was going on with him, and tell him about the basketball team. He was so proud of the fact that I had become a franchise owner. That was Mel though. He was happy to be of assistance anyway he could. To everybody, no matter the color, creed, or sexual orientation.
I was really trying hard at one point to get his book optioned into a movie. Reaching out to a few people I knew in the industry of influence like Nelson George, Bill Adler and a few others.It was his life story, centered around The Disco Era, The Paradise Garage, and being Gay.
I told him after I read the book, that I could not fathom how he wrote this, without breaking down into tears, as he had to relive the deaths of so many of his friends, including the incomporable DJ Larry Levan, due to the scourge we now know as AIDS.
Mel faced it all like he has done everything, with pride and with a fiestyness unmatched. Maybe now Mel, they will see the value in the story, and that time period. The late seventies, early eighties.
In my early career, Mel Cheren gave me some budgets to go in the recording studio and create.
DJ Divine’s “Get Into The Mix” became an accidental instant classic form those sessions. Mel assigned me to take the West End classic “Sessomato”, from the soundtrack “How Funny Can Sex Be”, and do a Hip-Hop version of it. My original plan was to create a beat to ride up under it, and then drop in an original beat to create a whole new break beat that DJ’s could cut. The new beat was so hot, I ran back to Mel and Ed Kushins at the West End office on W.57th Street, and asked them to increase the budget slightly, and I would make them two records for the price of one!
Me and DJ Divine went back into Power Play Studios and put Divine’s scratches and vocals on the record, and got engineer Alan Scott Plotkin to mix it down after I added some eerie synths to it, and voila! Instant classic. They broke the record on the air while it was still just an acetate plate on NY’s Kiss FM with Chuck Leonard on at prime time/drive time around 5 pm one afternoon. The phone lines went crazy, the distributors couldn’t find the record because it hadn’t been pressed yet! Mel and Ed were scrambling trying to get the record pressed, Divine and I were doing interviews and shows, and Divine, who had been known as a legendary DJ from Queens, was becoming a recording star in his own right. We still were able to take the Sessomato track and complete another electro funk classic called B Beat Classic, in which I bugged out on the vocodor, while splicing the beat over and over again with an original drum beat as the bed, as originally planned.
That is how I will remember Mel Cheren, as the man who gave a young upstart like me, a chance, a shot at being creative, even though I was from Queens, ’cause Uptown and the Bronx were ruling things in the Hip-Hop world at the time. Thank You Mel Cheren, from the bottom of my heart. There is no me, without you. May God rest your soul.
Just yesterday I was speaking to Henry Stone going down memory lane of the record business in the 70’s and 80’s and of course Mel Cheren entered the conversation. Mel and Ed started me in the record business in 1977. They were the best days of my professional life. Mel was a creative genius. I will miss him greatly.