Abe John Jacob (born October 7, 1944) is an American sound designer and audio engineer. Called the "Godfather of Sound", Jacob greatly influenced the design of sound reinforcement in modern musical theatre, and was one of the first persons credited in the role of sound designer on Broadway, with a sound designer credit in Playbill in 1971.
Jacob brought many new techniques to musical theatre, including head-worn wireless microphones, powerful concert loudspeakers with dedicated electronic processing, delayed speaker zones, under-balcony speakers, front-fill speakers, mix position in the audience, FFT analysis, scene recall, digital mixing consoles, and delay used to focus audience attention. Jacob sparked the creation of the Meyer Sound Laboratories UPA loudspeaker, which became their flagship product.
In 1998, Jacob won an Ovation Award for his sound design of Harriet's Return at the Geffen Playhouse. He never received a Tony Award, largely because the American Theatre Wing and The Broadway League began giving out Tony Awards for sound design in 2008 after his career highlights. He served on the Tony Award committee from 2011 to 2014, but then the committee halted the sound design category. Lighting designer Jules Fisher, Jacob's colleague on many productions, said that Jacob should have won a Tony Award in 1978 for Dancin'. Jacob received a Special Tony Award for "modern theatrical sound design" in June 2024 at the 77th Tony Awards at Lincoln Center.
In 1999, the United States Institute for Theatre Technology (USITT) bestowed upon Jacob the Distinguished Achievement in Sound Award. The same year, Jacob received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the EDDY Awards sponsored by Entertainment Design magazine. In 2008, the USITT gave Jacob their highest award, the USITT Award, and they commissioned the organization's first audio engineering monograph, titled The Designs of Abe Jacob. In 2016, Jacob was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Live Design Awards ceremony. In 2017, the Theatrical Sound Designers and Composers Association (TSDCA) granted Jacob the Distinguished Sound Designer Award.
Early life Abe John Jacob was born on October 7, 1944, in Tucson, Arizona. His parents were Abe Taft Jacob and Victoria Jacob (née Shaar), both of Lebanese heritage; his grandparents owned a supermarket in Tucson. After the supermarket closed because of wartime rationing, Jacob's father and his uncle George opened a Mexican restaurant in 1946, named Club 21, which operated for the next 73 years. When he was four years old, Jacob was crossing the street with his aunt, mother and maternal grandmother when a car struck two of them. His mother and grandmother were fatally injured. Abe and his aunt Mabel survived because she ran and pulled him out of the way. After this, he was raised by his aunt until he was 11.
At the urging of his aunt, Jacob acted very briefly in film, with a bit part in the 1951 Ronald Reagan western The Last Outpost at the age of six, and after that he performed as Tad Lincoln in a staging of Abe Lincoln in Illinois at the University of Arizona. Jacob appeared in several children's theatre performances in Tucson, but at age nine he was done with his acting career. Though he wished to be a musician, Jacob did not want to practice the piano, which made him realize he would never be a great pianist. In 1955, Jacob moved with his father and new stepmother to the Haddon Hill neighborhood of Oakland, California, where he attended Catholic school classes and served as an altar boy at Our Lady of Lourdes along with his new best friend, Tom Gericke. In September 1958, Jacob entered Catholic high school at St. Ignatius College Preparatory in San Francisco, while Gericke attended St. Joseph Notre Dame High School in Alameda. Despite this separation, Jacob and Gericke continued their friendship, with Jacob recording Gericke's teenage band around 1960.
Jacob joined the audio-visual department at his school. His first theatrical sound design role came when St. Ignatius was staging performances of High Button Shoes, The Mikado and The Desperate Hours. Without realizing it, Jacob put together a sound system design much like those being used at the time in Broadway plays – a system based on a few Altec 639 ribbon microphones positioned as foot mics along the front edge of the stage, amplified into Altec Voice of the Theatre loudspeakers. Because the school did not have the necessary equipment, Jacob rented a sound system for $150/week from McCune Sound, a regional sound company founded in 1932 by Harry McCune. This early connection to McCune was to prove critically important to Jacob's career.
Early career Graduating from high school, Jacob worked for McCune during the summer of 1962, then in September he moved to Los Angeles to enroll in college classes at Loyola Marymount University, where he earned a B.A. degree. At Loyola, he designed sound and lights for the college's theatrical productions, and he put together his own radio show on KXLU, the college's radio station; an early evening classical music program titled Eine Kleine Commute Music. Every summer he returned to the San Francisco Bay Area and worked for McCune. In 1964 and 1965, Jacob worked at the Berkeley Community Theatre on Ben Kapen's summer series theatrical program known as Melodyland. The 1965 year was different as Jacob worked the stage manager position for the first and last time, shepherding four productions: Leslie Uggams in The Boy Friend, Godfrey Cambridge in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, Pearl Bailey in Call Me Madam and Richard Chamberlain in Private Lives. Bailey was such a difficult client that Jacob determined never again to be stage manager.
Jacob was finished with his college coursework at the end of 1965, but his diploma ceremony was in June 1966. In the interim, Jacob worked at McCune. On August 29, 1966, he was part of the sound crew at the Beatles' final concert appearance, supported by McCune at Candlestick Park. Jacob joined Harry McCune's son, Harry McCune Jr., in developing the new concept of musicians touring with their own sound system. Jacob's old schoolmate Gericke was now a record producer working with people such as Lou Adler of Dunhill Records, and through this connection Jacob was introduced to Bobby Roberts, Dunhill's touring manager. Roberts asked Jacob to fix the problems which were being experienced on the road by the Mamas and the Papas, who were touring in support of their big radio hits "California Dreamin'" and "Monday, Monday". Jacob designed a sound system for them and mixed their show at the Boston Armory in October 1966. The group gave only about 30 concerts, and Jacob mixed most of them, including ones at Carnegie Hall and the Hollywood Bowl. The touring career of the Mamas and the Papas ended in early 1967.
Monterey Pop The Mamas and the Papas bandleader John Phillips assembled a board of directors to mount a free festival in Monterey, California. The board included Simon and Garfunkel, Cass Elliot, Lou Adler, John Lennon and Paul McCartney. Many major pop artists lobbied to perform, and the festival grew in scope, expanding to fill three days. The resulting Monterey Pop Festival was held during June 16–18, 1967.
Jacob designed the sound system for the whole festival, and he incorporated the stage requirements of the various bands on the bill, after which he determined that he would need a total of 24 microphone inputs on his mixer, which was unheard of at the time. He augmented the proprietary 16-channel stereo sound console designed by McCune head engineer Bob Cavin with two 4-channel mono Altec 1567 tube mixers to get 24 inputs. The mix position was at the side of the stage, a less-than-optimal but common configuration at the time because of cabling limitations. Meagher Electronics, known for supporting the Monterey Jazz Festival in the 1960s, supplied additional audio equipment and personnel including electronics technician Charlie Richmond, who observed that the rock festival pushed the sound gear much harder than the jazz festival. Both McCune and Meagher were Altec dealers, so Jacob combined their inventory to create a loudspeaker array appropriate for the Monterey County Fairgrounds main stage. Centered on the roof of the stage was a pair of Altec 612 cabinets topped with a pair of 203B horns. Four Altec 612 cabinets were in pairs at the left and right edges of the stage, surmounted on each side with a 1003B multicellular horn, an Altec A7 "Voice of the Theatre" cabinet, another 203B horn, and an Altec 9844 studio monitor for front fill. A pair of Altec 214 loudspeakers served the musicians as sidefill left and right, which in 1967 was an advancement in stage monitoring. All of this was powered by Altec amplifiers totaling about 1,000 watts. During soundcheck, guitarist/vocalist David Crosby of the Byrds exclaimed, "Oh groovy! A nice sound system at last," a moment which was caught on film and featured in the documentary Monterey Pop. McCune veteran Mort Feld mixed most of the acts while Jacob worked the stage. Jacob mixed two performances: Ravi Shankar's four hour set, and the Mamas and the Papas who closed the festival.
To get good sound for the film, recording engineer Wally Heider worked closely with Jacob to ensure a high quality signal from the same microphones used for the live sound system; this professional connection was called upon again in 1968 when Heider asked Jacob to assist in recording Cream at Winterland Ballroom. Similarly, other contacts made by Jacob at Monterey Pop served to advance his career. Lighting designer Chip Monck first met Jacob in Monterey, and later formed CMI Consultants in partnership with Jacob. Janis Joplin's road manager Albert Grossman was introduced to Jacob in Monterey, and he tapped Jacob in later years for touring support. A number of people involved with Jimi Hendrix were impressed with Jacob at Monterey, including managers Chas Chandler and Michael Jeffery, producer Jerry Goldstein and concert promoter Tom Hulett. Another connection Jacob made was with John Meyer, a young sound engineer who was supporting the Steve Miller Band. Meyer later said that Jacob and his McCune crew stood out because they were unusually dedicated to consistent audio quality.
The Monterey Pop experience transformed Jacob from a regional to a national figure in the field of concert sound.
Hendrix and more After Monterey, Hendrix's road manager, Gerry Stickels, called McCune to request Jacob as sound designer and mixer on tour. Jacob specified a sound system much like the one at Monterey, and first deployed it for Hendrix at the Ambassador Theater in Washington, D.C., during August 9–12, 1967, where he mixed the Jimi Hendrix Experience. After this, while Hendrix took a break to record Axis: Bold as Love, Jacob mixed sound for Simon and Garfunkel for three dates in Oregon in October 1967. The next month, Monck flew Jacob to New York City to meet Peter, Paul and Mary, who did not need a new sound system, as they owned one already, but needed someone with good ears to mix their shows. Jacob accepted the assignment and mixed their concerts from 1968 to 1970. In Manhattan, Jacob was supplied his own office space on 55th Street by Albert Grossman, who had seen Jacob's work at Monterey.