Jesse Kaye

Jesse Kaye is name-checked on the cover of "Freak Out!" (1966) under the heading "These People Have Contributed Materially In Many Ways To Make Our Music What It Is. Please Do Not Hold It Against Them". He is also mentioned in "The Real Frank Zappa Book" (1989).

In-house producer/engineer for MGM. In a long career worked on soundtracks ranging from Singin' In The Rain to 2001: A Space Odyssey, and with countless names from movies and music: Shirley Bassey, Rosemary Clooney, Billy Eckstine, Connie Francis, Harry James, Michel Legrand, Sam the Sham, Lalo Schifrin, Hank Williams, ...

Finally, the day of the first session rolled around -- about three in the afternoon at a place called TTG Recorders, Sunset Boulevard at Highland Avenue. The MGM Records accounting representative was a stingy old guy named Jesse Kaye. Jesse walked around with his hands behind his back, pacing the floor while we were recording, making sure nobody ran up any extra overtime costs by going beyond the three hours allotted for each session. During a break, I went into the control booth and told him: "Look, Jesse, we got a little problem here. We would like to stay on schedule. We would like to get this all done in the three hours -- these glorious three hours that you've given us to make this record -- but we don't have any money and we're all hungry. Could you lend me ten bucks?" There was a drive-in restaurant downstairs from the studio, and I figured ten 1965 dollars would be enough to feed the whole band and get us through the session. Well, Jesse's reputation was such that, if anybody had seen him lending money to a musician, he would have been ruined. He didn't say yes and he didn't say no. I walked away, figuring that was it -- I wasn't going to ask him anymore. I went back into the studio and prepared for the next take. Jesse walked in. He had his hands behind his back. He came over, casually, and pretended to shake hands with me. There was a ten-dollar bill rolled up in his palm. He tried to pass it to me, except I didn't realize what was going on, and the money fell on the floor. He made a face like "Oh, shit!" and grabbed it up real fast, hoping nobody had seen it, and stuffed it into my hand. Without this act of kindness from Jesse, there might not have been a Freak Out! album.