Joe Klein

Who is Joe Klein?

Joe Klein is a well-known American audio producer, voice over artist and voice director. While in high school, Klein was at the helm of a closed circuit radio station which spawned several major media figures. After a brief stint as a teenage disc jockey he was hired by jazz singer and producer John Lasalle in the early 1970s. The pair soon became partners and produced hundreds of national radio and television commercials and jingles.

In 1977, Klein started his own production company, L.A. Trax, INC. Shortly after starting the company Klein was "discovered" by radio veteran Scott Shannon, who at the time was working for Neil Bogart's Casablanca Records. Shannon asked Klein to produce an ad for the disco version of the Star Wars theme artist by Meco Menardo. The commercial was aired nationally on hundreds of leading radio stations and was largely responsible for propelling the record to #1 after it had stalled on the charts for several weeks. Klein went on to produce hundreds of additional ads for the label over the next three years.

As the notoriety of the commercials produced by Klein grew, he began to produce record spots for other major labels, including Warner Bros. Records, Capitol Records, EMI-America, Motown, Liberty, Chrysalis, Ariola-America among others. By the early 1980s L.A. Trax was known as the leading producer of record album spots in the United States. During a fifteen-year period Klein produced over 1200 radio and television spots working with the best known voice talents and in Hollywood, including Ernie Anderson, Chuck Riley, Gene Moss, Danny Dark and actors William Shatner and Martin Sheen. The company also produced several corporate and marketing videos for major corporations before Klein closed the company in 1992.