Keen Records was founded in April 1957 by two brothers, John and Alex Siamas. John ran a business manufacturing parts for the aircraft industry; he loved music but he was no musician. John’s original idea was to record music for Greek-Americans, as that was the brothers’ heritage, but he needed someone with knowledge of the music industry to help him. Fortunately, he met musician Bob Keane one night in a bar.
Bob Keane (real name Robert Kuhn) was born in Manhattan Beach, California, in 1922, the son of a building engineer. He began playing clarinet at the age of seven and ten years later was fronting his own Jazz band. He later joined Artie Shaw’s band.
That first conversation between Keane and Siamas must have gone well, as it developed into the foundation of Keen Records, clearly inspired by Keane’s name. The Siamas brothers put up the capital to establish the company in Culver City, and Keane used his musical abilities and industry connections to get the business underway. Early recordings were completed under Keane’s supervision at Radio Recorders and Capitol Records studios. The brothers also set up two subsidiary labels, Andex and Ensign, which were used mainly for Jazz and Gospel releases. The three labels used the same shared numbering system.
Not long after the launch of Keen, the Siamas brothers and Bob Keane had an amazing slice of good fortune. Record producer Robert “Bumps” Blackwell had just been fired from Specialty Records by owner Art Rupe for encouraging Sam Cooke to move away from Gospel music towards mainstream Pop songs. Blackwell was certainly guilty of helping Cooke to explore secular songs by organising some sessions in New Orleans on June 1st 1957 for Sam Cooke to record some secular tracks, including some songs he had written himself. Strangely, Rupe had approved that plan (maybe reluctantly, as he feared a backlash from fans of the Soul Stirrers), but he was expecting something like the songs of Little Richard. Out of that muddle came a series of events that did Specialty no good at all. Sam Cooke and Robert Blackwell decided to leave. As part of the settlement from Rupe, Blackwell was allowed to take away with him the masters of the tracks that had been completed in New Orleans. And next, Blackwell went to see Keane, to play him the songs and suggest Keen might like to issue some of the tracks. By the end of November 1957, Keen had their first number one, as “You Send Me” went to the top of both the fore-runner of the Billboard R&B Singles Chart (for six weeks) and the fore-runner of the Billboard Hot 100 Singles Chart (for three weeks), selling 1.7 million copies. Suddenly, Sam Cooke had gone from earning two hundred dollars a week to earning over five thousand.
The Siamas brothers were obviously delighted, but Bob Keane was anxious. He had every expectation of reaping the benefit of this good fortune, but he had received no paperwork concerning his co-ownership of Keen Records. When he started to push for share certificates and other confirmation documents, John Siamas sent him a letter requesting $5000 for the partnership to be confirmed, a sum that Keane could not provide. He felt that he had been tricked by the brothers, but he could see no way of proving what he had been promised. He walked away, soon to set up his own record company in 1958, which he called Del-Fi. He had been allowed to take with him the recording equipment that he had set up at Keen. Robert Bateman was hired by the brothers to step into his shoes.
Meanwhile, back at Specialty, Art Rupe was a little wiser. He could see that he had made a serious mistake in sacking Blackwell and thus losing Sam Cooke, but now he began to look through the tapes that Blackwell had brought back from the New Orleans sessions at Cosimo Matassa’s studio. He found a demo recording of a song that he thought had potential. It was called “I’ll Come Running Back to You”. Rupe asked arranger René Hall to write a new arrangement of the song, copying the instrumentation and the style of backing vocals that Blackwell had used on “You Send Me”. The overdubs were then recorded and added by Rupe on November 1st. “I’ll Come Running Back to You” was released by Specialty on November 18th, as “You Send Me” was making its way to number one.
The Siamas brothers similarly wanted to take advantage of the success of “You Send Me”. The follow-up from Keen was a cover of an old Ink Spots song “(I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons”, which Nat King Cole had taken to number one on the charts in 1946. It was released towards the end of the 1957. The two Sam Cooke songs, one from Specialty and one from Keen, were in competition over Christmas. The Keen song peaked at number seventeen on Billboard’s Overall Best Sellers in Stores chart (the precursor of the Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart) in January, while the Specialty song reached number eighteen. On the Billboard R&B Best Sellers in Stores chart, Specialty made it to number fifteen, while Keen climbed to number seven. The clinching result that made Specialty the winner came when “I’ll Come Running Back to You” went to number one on the Most Played By Jockeys chart on January 27th 1958. It was a small consolation for Art Rupe.
Sam Cooke was now Keen’s prize asset and he overshadowed the rest of the Keen artists, with the release of three studio albums, three compilation albums (two of which were issued after he switched to RCA victor in 1960), and over a dozen singles. There were no more number ones, but regular chart entries by “You Were Made For Me”, “Win Your Love For Me”, “Love You Most Of All” and “Only Sixteen” kept the cash flowing at Keen.
Given Sam Cooke’s popularity amongst White and Black music-lovers, it made sense for the Siamas brothers to issue his songs on LP 12-inch albums.
The Keen A-series of albums was launched in February 1958, with three Sam Cooke albums issued between February 1958 and April 1959. “Sam Cooke” and “Encore” are the first two. The last of the three is a tribute to Billie Holiday, entitled “Tribute to the Lady”, which was the only Keen album issued in stereo. A compilation album, “Hit Kit”, followed later in 1959.
Around the time that the Billie Holiday tribute album was being put together, Robert Blackwell took the decision to move to a bigger organisation. He switched to Mercury Records, where he became the company’s West Coast Director of A&R. Sam Cooke was subsequently offered a deal by RCA Victor, that included an advance of one hundred thousand dollars (around a million dollars today), which he could not turn down. He signed for RCA Victor in January 1960.
Within a few months Keen’s two key personnel had left, leaving the Siamas brothers on a slippery slope. They could not hope to strike lucky for a second time, so decided to wind up their involvement in the music industry. Existing projects for Keen and the two subsidiary labels Ensign and Andex were completed. As part of that process, John Siamas decided to put together two compilation albums featuring Sam Cooke. The first is a collection of unused recordings which was issued in October 1960 with the title “The Wonderful World of Sam Cooke”.
The second is a Gospel compilation, “I Thank God”, that consists of four Sam Cooke solo recordings, four tracks from the Gospel Harmonettes, and four from the Original Blind Boys. All the Sam Cooke tracks were recorded between 1958 and 1959, with a trio of session musicians, viz Red Callender (bass), Earl Palmer (drums), and Cliff White (guitar).
There are many Sam Cooke compilations available, but two stand out. In European markets in 2010, Not Now Music released a 3 CD set of remastered Sam Cooke songs from the first four albums, entitled “The Keen Records Story”.
In 2020, ABKCO released across Europe a remastered set of Sam Cooke’s first five Keen albums, plus some bonus tracks, on five CDs.
Selected Artists at Keen
Another battle with Specialty came when the Valiants recorded “Good Golly Miss Molly” in 1957 with Robert Blackwell, who had co-written the song with John Marascalco. Blackwell knew that Little Richard had already recorded the song because he had produced that too in July 1956 at Cosimo Matassa’s studio in New Orleans, but Art Rupe had then supervised a second version of the song in October, also recorded in New Orleans; neither version had yet been released. The Valiants’ version is certainly exciting, with guitar and piano solos. It is sung really fast. But it was no contest when Rupe finally issued Little Richard’s version in January 1958.
Keen released four singles by the Valiants, all of which are good Northern Soul dance tracks, flavoured with a dash of Doo-Wop. The four members of the group were Brice Coefield, Rip Spencer, Chester Pipkin, and leader Billy Storm.
Johnny “Guitar” Watson, who had been at RPM Records since 1955, came to Keen in 1958 to record a couple of singles. “One Room Country Shack” is typical of his Blues output, while “Honey” is more influenced by Doo-Wop and might appeal to fans of Americana. The B-side of “Honey” is different again, a Rock & Roll Pop song with a good piano break. It was written by Lou Adler and Herb Alpert! They had both come to Keen to work alongside Robert Blackwell as songwriters and studio technicians. Needless to say, they went on to great success as musicians. V.S.O.P. issued a compilation of all Watson’s Keen recordings in 2006.
The Turks were another Doo-Wop-inspired group aiming at the Pop chart. They made one single at Keen, “Okay” / “Father Time”, which was issued in 1958. The four members of the Turks were Jesse Belvin, Alex Hodge, Gaynel Hodge, and Tommy “Buster” Williams. V.S.O.P. released an album of the Turks’ Keen tracks in 2006, entitled “The Keen Records Sessions”, with multiple takes of the two issued songs plus some from the vaults.
The Turks in a 1957 Publicity Photo
The Siamas brothers signed a mixed collection of artists, offering Blues, Country, Jazz and Pop. They also added Gospel. The Pilgrim Travelers recorded “Go Down Moses” and “The Battle of Jericho” for their 1958 Keen single, and later added an album “
The Original Gospel Harmonettes recorded three singles on Andex, as well as contributing to the “I Thank God” compilation.
The company was finally closed down in 1961. The Siamas brothers did a deal with Robert Blackwell whereby much of the Keen back catalogue was re-issued on Blackwell’s Famous label.
