Is the most valuable back catalog in dance music - an empire of sounds sampled every single day, from KTel-type compilations to hot new tracks - on the trading block?

Question marks abound. I'm not too pleased to make speculative conclusions but a little investigation reveals that something strange is going on.

It started a few months ago, when I noticed that mail being sent to West End was being returned. This happens - to everybody - now and then, but after a few issues and a few months, I realized it wasn't a fluke.

I haven't heard anything from anyone at West End since Mel Cheren died in December 2007. Nobody's logged into their myspace page, per myspace's public display counter, since January 2, 2008 - just a few weeks after Mel Cheren passed and the news first broke. The company's main telephone phone number - 212.367.3737 - is now answered by a message indicating that the owner has not yet activated their voicemail. The fax number - 212.367.3738 - has been disconnected.

So I went to their website to get a phone number. That was when I noticed this, under their contact information:

West End Records
C/o Reiss Eisenpress LLP
425 Madison Avenue, 11th Floor
New York, NY 10017

(The link for the above is now dead - see below - but Google has it cached here.)

And looking up info for "Reiss Eisenpress LLP" indicates that the company is a New York firm which was responsible - and here's the key point - for Mel Cheren's estate after his passing (NY Times link here). The firm was also quoted as recently as February 2009 in connection with the sale of another of Mel Cheren's assets, the Colonial House Inn.

And now for the kicker: I made repeated attempts to contact both West End as well as individuals that I knew worked there at one time, as well as Reiss Eisenpress. I received no direct response, but there has been what appears to be an indirect one: within a week of beginning my inquiries, the website (or at least the main version of it) was taken down. You can no longer access anything from westendrecords.com. However, Google has picked up an older version which appears to date from at least three or four years ago.

So these are the facts: the business operating West End Records has no address where they do business, no working phone number, attempts were made to delete their website and the firm responsible for Mel Cheren's estate was listed as the contact person on the website.

It appears, though it is not certain, that the most valuable back catalog in dance music is either on the block or in a state of transition to something else.