Abe Keshishian, known professionally as Abe "Voco" Kesh (November 4, 1933 – July 3, 1989) was a

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

-based

disc jockey A disc jockey, more commonly abbreviated as DJ, is a person who plays recorded music for an audience. Types of DJs include radio DJs (who host programs on music radio stations), club DJs (who work at a nightclub or music festival), mobile ...

and

record producer A record producer is a recording project's creative and technical leader, commanding studio time and coaching artists, and in popular genres typically creates the song's very sound and structure. Virgil Moorefield"Introduction" ''The Producer as ...

. He is best-known for discovering the seminal hard rock band

Blue Cheer Blue Cheer was an American rock band that initially performed and recorded in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was sporadically active until 2009. Based in San Francisco, Blue Cheer played in a psychedelic blues rock or acid rock style, and ...

, and for producing their first two albums, ''

Vincebus Eruptum ''Vincebus Eruptum'' (; pseudo-Latin) is the debut album of American rock band Blue Cheer. Released on January 16, 1968, the album features a heavy-thunderous blues sound, which would later be known as heavy metal. A commercial and critical su ...

'' and ''

Outsideinside ''Outsideinside'' is the second album by American power trio Blue Cheer. Philips Records released the album in August 1968, only seven months after their debut LP, ''Vincebus Eruptum''. The album was recorded both outdoors and indoors—hence the ...

''. He also produced the band's 1968 Top 10 cover of

Eddie Cochran Ray Edward Cochran (; October 3, 1938 – April 17, 1960) was an American rock and roll musician. Cochran's songs, such as " Twenty Flight Rock", "Summertime Blues", " C'mon Everybody" and " Somethin' Else", captured teenage frustration and desir ...

's "

Summertime Blues "Summertime Blues" is a song co-written and recorded by American rock artist Eddie Cochran. It was written by Cochran and his manager Jerry Capehart. Originally a single B-side, it was released in August 1958 and peaked at number 8 on the ''Bi ...

." He worked as a DJ at the legendary KSAN San Francisco doing the overnight show. He was born in Detroit, and died at the Marin Hotel in San Rafael, where he lived the final 14 years of his life.

Record production

Besides Blue Cheer, Kesh produced albums by

Harvey Mandel Harvey Mandel (born March 11, 1945) is an American guitarist best known as a member of Canned Heat. He also played with Charlie Musselwhite and John Mayall as well as maintaining a solo career. Early life Mandel was born in Detroit, Michigan, ...

Graham Bond Graham John Clifton Bond (28 October 1937 – 8 May 1974) was an English rock/blues musician and vocalist, considered a founding father of the English rhythm and blues boom of the 1960s. Bond was an innovator, described as "an important, und ...

, Morning Glory, Linn County, The Savage Resurrection, Don Robertson, and others. Many of the artists he worked with originated or first achieved prominence in the San Francisco Bay area. He produced recordings for a number of labels, including Mercury,

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...

, Fontana,

Blue Thumb Blue is one of the three primary colours in the RYB colour model (traditional colour theory), as well as in the RGB (additive) colour model. It lies between violet and cyan on the spectrum of visible light. The eye perceives blue when o ...

, Pulsar, and Janus. Kesh produced

Chuck Berry Charles Edward Anderson Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017) was an American singer, songwriter and guitarist who pioneered rock and roll. Nicknamed the " Father of Rock and Roll", he refined and developed rhythm and blues into th ...

's '' Live at the Fillmore Auditorium'' after Berry's release from jail in 1967. Steve Miller was part of Berry's band, and recalled that during rehearsals, "All of a sudden, Mercury Records says, 'This is great. We want to make a live album.' And a deal was struck that afternoon the day we were going to do the show. They brought in this funky little board to record it on. All of a sudden, this guy Abe Kesh shows up, who was the producer for Mercury. We're rehearsing and all ready to go when he takes Chuck Berry outside for 10 minutes before the show. Chuck comes back in and he's almost unconscious, like he's in slow motion. They went out and had a shot or something. We did four sets and we recorded the album. It came out pretty good." In 1972, he produced the compilation album ''Lights Out: San Francisco (Voco Presents the Soul of the Bay Area)'', spotlighting music from the San Francisco region. The album, released on the Blue Thumb label, featured tracks by John Lee Hooker,

Tower of Power Tower of Power is an American R&B and funk based band and horn section, originating in Oakland, California, that has been performing since 1968. There have been a number of lead vocalists, the best-known being Lenny Williams, who fronted th ...

, Sylvester and the Hot Band,

Dan Hicks & His Hot Licks Daniel Ivan Hicks (December 9, 1941 – February 6, 2016) was an American singer-songwriter known for an idiosyncratic style that combined elements of cowboy folk, jazz, country, swing, bluegrass, pop, and gypsy music. He led ″Dan Hic ...

, and other artists.

Radio broadcasting

Kesh was a radio personality on San Francisco rock station KSAN in the late 1960s, hosting a program titled "Lights Out San Francisco." He was the first rock DJ to air the gospel recording "

Oh Happy Day "Oh Happy Day" is a 1967 gospel music arrangement of the 1755 hymn by clergyman Philip Doddridge. Recorded by the Edwin Hawkins Singers, it became an international hit in 1969, reaching No. 4 on the US Singles Chart, No. 1 in France, Germany, an ...

" by the

Edwin Hawkins Singers Edwin Reuben Hawkins (August 19, 1943 – January 15, 2018) was an American gospel musician, pianist, choir master, composer, and arranger. He was one of the originators of the urban contemporary gospel sound. He (as leader of the Edwin Hawkins S ...

. According to a May 1969 article in ''

Rolling Stone ''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner, and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason. It was first known for its ...

'', the album had been released in limited quantities to the gospel market in 1967. In 1969, "John Lingel, rock promotion director at Chatton Distributors in Oakland, was going through some gospel product lying around when he stumbled onto the Hawkins LP .. He gave it to Abe 'Voco' Kesh at KSAN-FM, who, he says, 'immediately flipped,' and the rush of phone calls confirmed gospel-fan Lingel's hunch: 'Oh Happy Day' was hit material."Fong-Torres, Ben, "'Oh Happy Day': A Pop Godsend,"
''Rolling Stone'' magazine, May 17, 1969 Based on the reaction to Kesh's airing,

Buddah Records Buddah Records (later known as Buddha Records) was an American record label founded in 1967 in New York City. The label was born out of Kama Sutra Records, an MGM Records-distributed label, which remained a key imprint following Buddah's foun ...

signed the Edwin Hawkins Singers, gave them a $50,000 advance, and the single "Oh Happy Day" became an international hit.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kesh, Abe 1933 births 1989 deaths Record producers from Michigan American radio DJs