Abe Jacob
Early life[edit]
Abe John Jacob was born on October 7, 1944, in Tucson, Arizona. His parents were Abe Taft Jacob and Victoria Jacob (née Shaar), both of Lebanese heritage; his grandparents owned a supermarket in Tucson. After the supermarket closed because of wartime rationing, Jacob's father and his uncle George opened a Mexican restaurant in 1946, named Club 21, which operated for the next 73 years.[13][14] When he was four years old, Jacob was crossing the street with his aunt, mother and maternal grandmother when a car struck two of them. His mother and grandmother were fatally injured. Abe and his aunt Mabel survived because she ran and pulled him out of the way.[15] After this, he was raised by his aunt until he was 11.[16]
At the urging of his aunt, Jacob acted very briefly in film, with a bit part in the 1951 Ronald Reagan western The Last Outpost at the age of six, and after that he performed as Tad Lincoln in a staging of Abe Lincoln in Illinois at the University of Arizona. Jacob appeared in several children's theatre performances in Tucson, but at age nine he was done with his acting career.[16] Though he wished to be a musician, Jacob did not want to practice the piano, which made him realize he would never be a great pianist.[17][18] In 1955, Jacob moved with his father and new stepmother to the Haddon Hill neighborhood of Oakland, California, where he attended Catholic school classes and served as an altar boy at Our Lady of Lourdes along with his new best friend, Tom Gericke. In September 1958, Jacob entered Catholic high school at St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco, while Gericke attended St. Joseph Notre Dame High School in Alameda. Despite this separation, Jacob and Gericke continued their friendship, with Jacob recording Gericke's teenage band around 1960.[17]
Jacob joined the audio-visual department at his school. His first theatrical sound design role came when St. Ignatius was staging performances of High Button Shoes, The Mikado and The Desperate Hours. Without realizing it, Jacob put together a sound system design much like those being used at the time in Broadway plays – a system based on a few Altec 639 ribbon microphones positioned as foot mics along the front edge of the stage, amplified into Altec Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers. Because the school did not have the necessary equipment, Jacob rented a sound system for $150/week from McCune Sound, a regional sound company founded in 1932 by Harry McCune. This early connection to McCune was to prove critically important to Jacob's career.[19]
Early career[edit]
Graduating from high school, Jacob worked for McCune during the summer of 1962, then in September he moved to Los Angeles to enroll in college classes at Loyola Marymount University, where he earned a B.A. degree. At Loyola, he designed sound and lights for the college's theatrical productions, and he put together his own radio show on KXLU, the college's radio station; an early evening classical music program titled Eine Kleine Commute Music. Every summer he returned to the San Francisco Bay Area and worked for McCune. In 1964 and 1965, Jacob worked at the Berkeley Community Theatre on Ben Kapen's summer series theatrical program known as Melodyland. The 1965 year was different as Jacob worked the stage manager position for the first and last time, shepherding four productions: Leslie Uggams in The Boy Friend, Godfrey Cambridge in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Pearl Bailey in Call Me Madam and Richard Chamberlain in Private Lives. Bailey was such a difficult client that Jacob determined never again to be stage manager.[20]
Jacob was finished with his college coursework at the end of 1965, but his diploma ceremony was in June 1966. In the interim, Jacob worked at McCune. On August 29, 1966, he was part of the sound crew at the Beatles' final concert appearance, supported by McCune at Candlestick Park. Jacob joined Harry McCune's son, Harry McCune, Jr., in developing the new concept of musicians touring with their own sound system.[20] Jacob's old schoolmate Gericke was now a record producer working with people such as Lou Adler of Dunhill Records, and through this connection Jacob was introduced to Bobby Roberts, Dunhill's touring manager. Roberts asked Jacob to fix the problems which were being experienced on the road by the Mamas and the Papas, who were touring in support of their big radio hits "California Dreamin'" and "Monday, Monday". Jacob designed a sound system for them and mixed their show at the Boston Armory in October 1966. The group gave only about 30 concerts, and Jacob mixed most of them, including ones at Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. The touring career of the Mamas and the Papas ended in early 1967.[21]
Monterey Pop[edit]
The Mamas and the Papas bandleader John Phillips assembled a board of directors to mount a free festival in Monterey, California. The board included Simon and Garfunkel, Cass Elliot, Lou Adler, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Many major pop artists lobbied to perform, and the festival grew in scope, expanding to fill three days. The resulting Monterey Pop Festival was held during June 16–18, 1967.[22]
Jacob designed the sound system for the whole festival, and he incorporated the stage requirements of the various bands on the bill, after which he determined that he would need a total of 24 microphone inputs on his mixer, which was unheard of at the time. He augmented the proprietary 16-channel stereo sound console designed by McCune head engineer Bob Cavin with two 4-channel mono Altec 1567 tube mixers to get 24 inputs. The mix position was at the side of the stage,[23] a less-than-optimal but common configuration at the time because of cabling limitations. Meagher Electronics, known for supporting the Monterey Jazz Festival in the 1960s, supplied additional audio equipment and personnel including electronics technician Charlie Richmond, who observed that the rock festival pushed the sound gear much harder than the jazz festival.[24] Both McCune and Meagher were Altec dealers, so Jacob combined their inventory to create a loudspeaker array appropriate for the Monterey County Fairgrounds main stage. Centered on the roof of the stage was a pair of Altec 612 cabinets topped with a pair of 203B horns. Four Altec 612 cabinets were in pairs at the left and right edges of the stage, surmounted on each side with a 1003B multicellular horn, an Altec A7 "Voice of the Theatre" cabinet, another 203B horn, and an Altec 9844 studio monitor for front fill.[25] A pair of Altec 214 loudspeakers served the musicians as sidefill left and right, which in 1967 was an advancement in stage monitoring.[26] All of this was powered by Altec amplifiers totaling about 1,000 watts.[25] During soundcheck, guitarist/vocalist David Crosby of the Byrds exclaimed, "Oh groovy! A nice sound system at last," a moment which was caught on film and featured in the documentary Monterey Pop.[27] McCune veteran Mort Feld mixed most of the acts while Jacob worked the stage.[23] Jacob mixed two performances: Ravi Shankar's four hour set, and the Mamas and the Papas who closed the festival.
To get good sound for the film, recording engineer Wally Heider worked closely with Jacob to ensure a high quality signal from the same microphones used for the live sound system; this professional connection was called upon again in 1968 when Heider asked Jacob to assist in recording Cream at Winterland Ballroom. Similarly, other contacts made by Jacob at Monterey Pop served to advance his career. Lighting designer Chip Monck first met Jacob in Monterey, and later formed CMI Consultants in partnership with Jacob. Janis Joplin's road manager Albert Grossman was introduced to Jacob in Monterey, and he tapped Jacob in later years for touring support. A number of people involved with Jimi Hendrix were impressed with Jacob at Monterey, including managers Chas Chandler and Michael Jeffery, producer Jerry Goldstein and concert promoter Tom Hulett. Another connection Jacob made was with John Meyer, a young sound engineer who was supporting the Steve Miller Band. Meyer later said that Jacob and his McCune crew stood out because they were unusually dedicated to consistent audio quality.[22]
The Monterey Pop experience transformed Jacob from a regional to a national figure in the field of concert sound.[22]
Hendrix and more[edit]
After Monterey, Hendrix's road manager, Gerry Stickels, called McCune to request Jacob as sound designer and mixer on tour. Jacob specified a sound system much like the one at Monterey, and first deployed it for Hendrix at the Ambassador Theater in Washington, D.C., during August 9–12, 1967, where he mixed the Jimi Hendrix Experience. After this, while Hendrix took a break to record Axis: Bold as Love, Jacob mixed sound for Simon and Garfunkel for three dates in Oregon in October 1967. The next month, Monck flew Jacob to New York City to meet Peter, Paul and Mary, who did not need a new sound system, as they owned one already, but needed someone with good ears to mix their shows. Jacob accepted the assignment and mixed their concerts from 1968 to 1970. In Manhattan, Jacob was supplied his own office space on 55th Street by Albert Grossman, who had seen Jacob's work at Monterey.[28]
Jacob toured with the Jimi Hendrix Experience for most of 1968. The year started with a rush of travel through Sweden, Denmark and France in January, followed by a Hendrix concert in San Francisco at The Fillmore on February 1, 1968. San Francisco had been Jacob's new hometown since early June 1967 when he moved into an old Victorian flat with housemates Doug Leighton (future co-founder of RTS Systems intercom products), Ben Fong-Torres (editor at Rolling Stone) and his old friend Tom Gericke. Jacob's time in San Francisco was short as he soon left to mix sound for Hendrix in 49 cities across the U.S. The sound gear for this tour fit into a single 19-foot box truck along with some lighting gear, all the band's musical instruments, the band's concert posters, and assorted merchandise. To mix the show, Jacob used two Altec 1567A four-channel rotary knob mixers linked together, one for the four drum microphones (kick, snare, overhead left and overhead right), and one for the vocal microphones, which consisted of Hendrix on lead vocals, bassist Noel Redding on backing vocals, and one channel for Jacob to announce the band at the start of the show. No microphones were needed for lead guitar or bass guitar, which had their own amplifiers. The stage monitor system was simply two Altec 604E sidefills which took their signal from a custom McCune-designed combiner fed with inputs from the two Altec mixers' auxiliary outputs. This was not enough for drummer Mitch Mitchell to hear the vocals and his own drums, so in the second half of 1968, when Hendrix started another tour, Jacob augmented the sound system with four self-powered speakers behind the drummer: four Altec 1604B cabinets. This helped Mitchell hear himself over the loud guitar amplifiers.[28]
During a break in which Hendrix stopped touring to record Electric Ladyland, Jacob mixed sound for some Peter, Paul and Mary dates, notably their March 15, 1968, performance at Carnegie Hall, and he worked for McCune on various assignments such as the Sky River Rock Festival in August–September in Washington state. He helped Heider record the Firesign Theatre comedy troupe, and in October he supported Cass Elliot in concert at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas.[28]
Hendrix took Jacob to Europe in early 1969 to mix his concert dates there. Among other appearances that year by Hendrix was the Northern California Folk-Rock Festival in May 1969, where the sound system stopped working for a few minutes during his set. Carlos Santana commented about the technical glitch that Hendrix's guitar by itself made him sound distant, "like he was inside a little nucleus", but when the full sound system was restored "we were like catapulted into the Milky Way."[29] The rest of 1969 was busy for Jacob mixing more than 160 dates for Peter, Paul and Mary. Bandleader Peter Yarrow was a stern taskmaster with regard to sound quality, and Jacob credits Yarrow with helping him develop more of a critical ear, to listen for problem areas and to work diligently to correct them.[30]
Also in 1969, Jacob and Gericke tried to produce a psychedelic music video, with three bands participating including Blue Cheer and the Steve Miller Band, but the results were low quality and the project never took off.[30]
Back at McCune, John Meyer had been hired at the request of Harry Jr to create a 3-way loudspeaker for concerts. By early 1972 the revolutionary JM3 system was ready, named for Meyer but with electronic processing by both Meyer and Cavin. Jacob auditioned the JM3 at the shop, with Meyer playing a Nagra tape of the Ringo Starr drum solo on the song "The End" to help Jacob determine that the new loudspeaker was clean and powerful, reproducing crisp transients. Jacob immediately agreed to use the system. Meyer said about Jacob, "There wasn't a lot of discussion... you didn't have to talk him into it." Jacob used JM3s at Four for McGovern, a benefit concert for presidential candidate George McGovern, on April 15, 1972, inside The Forum (Inglewood, California). Barbra Streisand's album Live Concert at the Forum documents her performance that day.[31]
Jacob began in 1970 to wean himself from Hendrix tours, as he had more concert dates with Peter, Paul and Mary. McCune soundman Mike Neal took over sound for Hendrix, mixing a sold-out show at the Berkeley Community Theatre in May while Jacob recorded the event from inside the Wally Heider mobile recording truck. To satisfy the large, angry crowd turned away at the doors, Jacob pointed the truck's loudspeakers at them to appease them, perhaps preventing a riot.[32] Neal yielded to Jacob on the more important dates such as the Isle of Wight Festival in August 1970, and a series of shows in Sweden, Denmark and Germany. Jacob was working another show on September 18 when he learned that Hendrix had died. Jacob traveled to Seattle to attend Hendrix's private funeral on October 1, with only family and musical associates invited. Shortly thereafter, Peter, Paul and Mary announced their breakup, and Jacob was suddenly without two of his most important clients. He remarked later about this turning point that he felt exhausted from too much touring, and not just rock and pop music, but also corporate events for Holiday Magic, a multi-level marketing firm that organized meetings across North and South America, supported by sound systems from McCune. Jacob said all of that touring "was enough to drive you crazy."[33]
Broadway[edit]
Hair[edit]
During his time touring with Peter, Paul and Mary, Jacob was introduced by Yarrow to producer Michael Butler. Butler requested Jacob help with poor sound in the Boston staging of Hair, so Jacob flew to Boston in February 1970 to see what he could do. Jacob brought a rock music esthetic to the theatre for the first time, adding more loudspeakers for more volume, and he used more microphones in fixed locations, more band and singing microphones, and one of the early VHF wireless microphones by Edcor used on a few songs. Lighting designer Jules Fisher said the improvement to the sound quality was immediately apparent. With this success in Boston, Fisher and Jacob were sent to other cities to assist in the mounting of new productions of Hair, including overseas travel to Europe where they helped local lighting and sound crews attain similar results, modernizing musical theatre in the process. Fisher said that insular theatre crews in England and France in 1970 were locked into their traditional methods, and that Jacob's sound and Fisher's lighting designs were much more dynamic and unusual, difficult to convey to the locals, and difficult to implement: "we were teaching everybody; plus we had the language barrier." In January 1971, Jacob redesigned the original Hair production on Broadway. Butler said "Abe made a big difference" in the sound of Hair. Theatre sound historian David Collison noticed that Jacob called himself a sound designer, which was not common at the time.[34]