Clive Davis died June 22nd at age 94 after suffering from a respiratory illness. Davis dominated the music industry for more than five decades as the chief executive of Columbia Records, the founder of Arista Records and J Records, and the chief creative officer of Sony Music Entertainment. His ear for talent nurtured the careers of many of the most important artists of the 20th and 21st centuries, most famously Whitney Houston, Luther Vandross, Earth, Wind & Fire, Sly and the Family Stone, Aretha Franklin, and Janis Joplin.
Beyond discovering talent, Davis was a relentless force in the industry, pioneering executive strategies that defined the modern major label system. His influence was so wide that he became one of the few executives to become a household name and earn induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
His annual pre-Grammy parties were legendary industry functions that attracted stellar talent, though they also courted controversy—most notably when a party continued after Whitney Houston was found dead in the hosting hotel. Controversy was not new to Davis; during the 1970s, his name was associated with a federal drug and payola investigation.
The Brooklyn-born mogul was a Harvard-trained attorney who stumbled into the music business through a legal job at Columbia Records, where he helped guide Bob Dylan and Barbra Streisand through the contractual process. He went on to build Arista Records, signing acts like The Kinks, Gil Scott-Heron, and Melissa Manchester. Davis’s ability to pick future stars continued with every decade, including partnering to launch Sean “Diddy” Combs’s Bad Boy Records in the 1990s. When pushed toward retirement, he resisted and formed J Records, where he launched Alicia Keys’s career and added Jazmine Sullivan, Jennifer Hudson, and Rod Stewart to the roster. In 2002, he also established the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music at NYU.
