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Chad Kassem is a true audio renaissance man. For years he has headed Acoustic Sounds, supplier of select recorded musical treasures from a variety of audiophile and specialty labels. Kassem also has his own label, Analogue Productions, which produces reissues, revivals, and a series of original recordings under the label APO Records.

It is his love of traditional blues that drives APO's roster. It also inspired Kassem to purchase an old church in Salina, Kansas and get into the recording studio business, back in 1996. Six years and nearly $1 million of renovations and equipment purchases later, Kassem's Blue Heaven Studios has been turning out discs from such legendary bluesmen as Jimmie Lee Robinson, Honeyboy Edwards, Henry Townsend, Hubert Sumlin, and Wild Child Butler.

As a result of all of this hard work and dedication, Kassem recently received the greatest honor given to a non-musician in the blues industry, the Keeping the Blues Alive Award, at a ceremony in Memphis, TN. The award's administrator, The Blues Foundation, has worked since 1980 to promote and preserve the blues worldwide. It says that Kassem received the award for his efforts to document blues legends before the genre's greatest masters are gone forever.

In addition to the annual Keeping the Blues Alive Awards, the Memphis-based foundation presides over the Handy Awards, which are second only to the Grammy Awards for blues performers. Past winners of the KBAA include Alan Lomax, whose field recordings introduced the world to Leadbelly and several other blues greats, and Larry Cohn of Sony/Legacy Records.

Since his purchase of the 77-year-old church that has become Blue Heaven, Kassem says, he has overseen extensive structural and electrical service repair for the building. He also scouted an ample supply of classic analog recording decks and consoles, in addition to a variety of vintage tube mics and "loads of outboard equipment" to stock the control room. Kassem points out that the studio was designed by Neil Muncy, the former vice president of the Audio Engineering Society, and also includes a Neumann lathe to cut direct to disc.

Recent audiophile releases recorded at Blue Heaven Studios include direct-to-disc recordings of Wild Child Butler and Lazy Lester and 45rpm cuts by legendary blues pianists Pinetop Perkins and Henry Gray, along with new vinyl from Nancy Bryan and Jimmie Lee Robinson. Kassem says that all of the recent APO releases will also be released on SACD. Stereophile's bestselling jazz CD, Rendezvous, with Jerome Harris' Quintet, was recorded at Blue Heaven, as was the magzine's forthcoming CD of the Brahms and Mozart Clarinet Quintets. All APO vinyl is pressed at Record Technology and mastered at the recently upgraded AcousTech facility (another of Kassem's many investments in audio) by famed mastering and cutting engineer Kevin Gray. For more on APO Records, see Chip Stern's review of the label's recent releases in the March 2002 issue of Stereophile.