From the moment Clive Davis was appointed general manager of Columbia Records Group in 1965, the Brooklyn-born music executive was rarely far from the very pinnacle of the music industry. Over the course of his remarkable six-decade career, he helped launch stars as era-defining and diverse as Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen and Santana. His Grammy parties were so legendary they sometimes overshadowed the awards show itself. No less an authority than Aretha Franklin called Davis, who has died at the age of 94, “the greatest record man of all time.”
But Davis did not in initially seek out a career in music. Born on April 4, 1932, he grew up as the son of an electrician in New York City. “The emphasis in Jewish families that did not have any money was that you've got to be a lawyer, or you’ve got to be a doctor,” Davis reflected in the 2017 documentary Clive Davis: The Soundtrack of Our Lives. “I was going to be a lawyer, with no clue what being a lawyer meant.”
