Remembering Mel Cheren
Last night we heard the sad news that Mel Cheren, the longtime New York City dance music icon who helmed West End Records and AIDS activist, passed away on Sunday. Long before major labels jumped on the disco bandwagon and shanghaied it in the ‘70s, Cheren helped promote the genre in the city’s underground and earned the nickname The Godfather of Dance. As an A&R man, he had a golden ear. He signed groundbreaking, chart-topping singles by NYC Peach Boys (“Don’t Make Me Wait”), Taana Gardner’s “Heartbeat” and Loose Joints’ (“Is It All Over My Face?”) Decades after their release, producers continue to sample these tracks.
Cheren was also the financial backer of the Paradise Garage and mentored a young DJ named Larry Levan, whose marathon sets continues to influence today’s DJs. In recent years, Cheren issued various label reissue projects (such as West End’s 25th anniversary two-disc set mixed by Masters At Work), wrote a book (My Life and the Paradise Garage: Keep On Dancin’), helmed a bed and breakfast in Chelsea, and dreamed of opening a dance music museum. Cheren would’ve turned 75 next month.
Donations in Mel’s honor can be made to GMHC, 119 West 24th Street , New York, NY 10011; The LGBT Community Center at 208 West 13th Street, New York, NY 10011; or LIFEbeat, 630 9th Avenue Suite 1010 New York, NY 10036.
Comments
Mel Cheren: Death Of A Legend 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. Sincerely,