Allen Klein (1931 – 2009)

Allen Klein, iconic music business entrepreneur and founder of
ABKCO Music & Records, died early July 4 after a lengthy battle
with Alzheimer’s Disease. New York-based ABKCO traces its
origins back to Allen Klein & Co., the firm Klein started in the
late 1950s. Today, ABKCO is home to recordings by Sam Cooke,
the Rolling Stones, The Animals, Herman’s Hermits, Bobby
Womack, Marianne Faithfull, the Kinks, Chubby Checker, Bobby
Rydell and many others. The company’s music publishing
division comprises over 2000 copyrights, including songs
composed by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, Sam Cooke, Bobby
Womack, Ray Davies, Pete Townshend and other legendary
songwriters. In 2006, Klein was the recipient of the Abe Olman
Publisher Award, presented by the Songwriters Hall of Fame
in recognition of his career-long leadership position in music
publishing.

The youngest of four children, Klein was born in Newark, New
Jersey on December 18, 1931. His mother died before he reached
his first birthday, and at the age of four he was placed in
an orphanage, where he remained until he was nine. Thereafter,
he was raised in part by his grandmother and an aunt. As a
teenager, he had several jobs while attending evening classes,
and he worked at the Essex County News newspaper, where he
learned the basics of distribution. He graduated from Upsala
College in East Orange, New Jersey with a degree in accounting.
Following a stint in the US Army, he clerked for the Manhattan
accounting firm of Prager & Fenton.

Through a friendship with publisher Don Kirshner, Klein became
involved in the music business. A meeting with Kirshner's partner
Bobby Darin started him on the path of auditing record companies
on behalf of recording artists, and he developed a fervent following
among these clients based on his uncanny ability to identify
unpaid royalties. In 1962, Klein met Sam Cooke and became his
manager. On Cooke’s behalf, he secured an unprecedented agreement
with RCA Records providing for not only artistic control but Cooke’s
ownership of his own master recordingss via Tracey Records, a
label that Klein set up for this purpose. That contract forever
changed the relationship between label and artist that had been
in place since the birth of the recording industry.

ABKCO (for "Allen B. Klein Co.") was founded in 1958 as an umbrella
company involved in management, music publishing, film, TV and
theatrical production. In 1967, Klein added Philadelphia’s Cameo
Parkway Records to ABKCO’s portfolio. In the mid-1960s, Klein
turned his sights to the UK, where he became associated with
producer Mickie Most (Animals, Herman’s Hermits, Donovan, etc).
He worked with Rolling Stones manager/producer Andrew Loog
Oldham to secure a new contract with Decca (UK), and would later
purchase the band’s master recordings from Oldham. For a time,
Klein managed both the Beatles' Apple Corps Ltd. as well as the
Rolling Stones. Klein represented The Beatles in re-negotiations
between Apple and EMI in 1969, which resulted in their being
granted the highest royalty rate ever paid to an artist up to
that time.

In 1971 Klein co-produced the Concert for Bangladesh with George
Harrison at Madison Square Garden, the forerunner of every rock
fund-raising benefit on behalf of a cause or charity. Following the
Beatles' split, he continued to work with John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Through ABKCO’s involvement in Broadway productions, Klein
worked with such theater luminaries as Edward Albee, Renee Taylor
and Joseph Bologna. ABKCO Films produced several movies, most
notably "The Greek Tycoon" starring Jacqueline Bisset and Anthony
Quinn, and "El Topo" and "Holy Mountain", cult classics directed
by Alejandro Jodorowsky. In 2004 ABKCO was awarded a Grammy award
for the DVD documentary "Sam Cooke: Legend", and an ABKCO-
produced Sam Cooke film biography based on "Dream Boogie", Peter
Guralnick’s best-selling biography of the soul and gospel star,
is currently in pre-production.

Klein is survived by his sister, Naomi; his longtime companion, Iris
Keitel; his wife, Betty; their three children, Robin, Jody and Beth;
his son-in-law, Dan and daughter-in-law, Jennifer; and his four
grandchildren, Jeremy, Julian, Jade and Zachary. Klein was also
a supporter of many causes, including City of Hope, The Painted
Turtle, the NYU Department of Cardiology Lipid Treatment & Research
Center, Sloane Kettering Children’s Hospital, the Juvenile Diabetes
Association, Alzheimer’s Association, the Nordoff-Robbins Center
for Music Therapy and the Central Park Medical Unit.

ABKCO will continue as a family-run business.

Services for Allen Klein will be held in New York this Tuesday, July
7 at 11:45 am at Riverside Memorial Chapel, 180 West 76th Street,
New York. In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of Allen Klein
may be made to the Alzheimers Association of New York and the
Juvenile Diabetes Association.