The New York Times - December 21, 2007
Douglas Martin

The cause was pneumonia as a complication of AIDS, said Sherri Eisenpress, the executor of his estate.

As the AIDS epidemic began to ravage his nightclub's clientele, Mr. Cheren gave the Gay Men's Health Crisis, the prominent AIDS service group, its first home, donating space for it in a building he owned in Chelsea.

It was Mr. Cheren's financial backing that helped his business partner and former lover, Michael Brody, create the Paradise Garage in 1977 out of what was once a parking garage at 84 King Street in SoHo. In its heyday, patrons crowded the club's 25,000-square-foot floor as they danced under the commanding sway of the inventive disc jockey Larry Levan and the club's powerful sound system.

The Paradise Garage was "the epicenter of D.J. culture in the '80s," an article in Newsday said in 2002, describing it as a place where Madonna and Diana Ross would mingle with artists like Keith Haring and gussied-up unknowns. In a 2006 documentary about Mr. Cheren, "The Godfather of Disco," he called the Garage "the ultimate expression of the whole fabric" of gay night life in an era of extravagant parties, casual sex and recreational drug use.

With his record label, West End, Mr. Cheren helped create the 12-inch vinyl single, which gained its greatest popularity in discos. The disc permitted longer playing time than the standard seven-inch record and was said to provide a cleaner sound.

Mr. Cheren was also considered the originator of the scratchy "whoosh" sound that became a staple of hip-hop disc jockeys. And while working for another label, Scepter Records, before founding West End, he came up with the idea of instrumental B-sides for dance singles.

In the 1980s Mr. Cheren had to deal with a backlash against disco music, even though West End had some of its biggest hits after the disco craze had peaked. He eventually gave up his interest in the company to his partner, Ed Kushins. The Paradise Garage closed in 1987.

A more serious problem was AIDS, which was infecting many men close to Mr. Cheren. In 1980, as he was converting part of his Chelsea building into apartments, he offered space to the Gay Men's Health Crisis, then a young organization in need of headquarters.

"No one would rent to them," Mr. Cheren said in an interview with The New York Times in 1994.

After the organization moved to other quarters in 1984, Mr. Cheren turned the building into the Colonial House Inn, a 20-room gay-oriented guesthouse. He continued to live there.

In the late 1980s Mr. Cheren founded 24 Hours for Life, a nonprofit group that raised money from the music industry for AIDS relief. That organization also published his autobiography, "My Life and the Paradise Garage: Keep On Dancin'."

Mr. Brody died of AIDS in 1987. Mr. Levan, the disc jockey, died in 1992. Mr. Cheren left no immediate survivors.

Melvin Cheren was born on Jan. 21, 1933, in Everett, Mass., and grew up in the Boston area. He got his first job in the record business in 1959, as a salesman for ABC-Paramount Records. He also began painting, preferring to use his fingers instead of a brush. Several of his canvases were reproduced on the covers of jazz albums, including Sonny Rollins's "East Broadway Run Down."

In the 1960s Mr. Cheren was drafted into the Army and served in Germany. On his return, in 1970, he went to work for Scepter and urged the company to release a new sort of dance music he had been hearing. He became a "disco pest," he told The Times in 2000.

Mr. Cheren and Mr. Kushins started West End Music Industries in 1976. The company's first release was "Sessomatto," a disco instrumental by Sesso Matto. West End went on to release disco hits like Karen Young's "Hot Shot," Taana Gardner's "Work That Body" and "Heartbeat," Bettye LaVette's "Doin' the Best That I Can" and the NYC Peech Boys' "Don't Make Me Wait."

Mr. Cheren liked to mix play and work, taking what he picked up at dance clubs in New York City and on Fire Island as inspiration for his records and paintings. At age 69, he said, "I still own the dance floor."

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