On Clive Davis and the demise of a music mogul
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The greatest solution to encapsulate the advanced, game-changing legacy of Clive Davis, the legendary label head who died Monday at 94, is thru his discovery and meticulous shaping of Whitney Houston into a world pop star.
The 12 months was 1983. Months earlier, Davis orchestrated the gold comeback of the Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin, along with her Luther Vandross-produced album Jump To It. Davis was on the lookout for contemporary expertise so as to add to his Arista Records roster, which included gentle rock behemoths Air Supply, crossover R&B singer-songwriter-guitarist Ray Parker Jr., and trailblazing pop vocalist Dionne Warwick.
He discovered it throughout a showcase at a New York night time spot.
“It was at a club called Sweet Water. …” Davis mentioned in a 2015 People interview, recalling when he first noticed Houston carry out. “She was doing back up singing for her brother and mother Cissy Houston and then did two solo songs that were essentially her ‘audition’ for me.”
Davis was floored by Houston’s highly effective cowl of George Benson’s “The Greatest Love of All.”
“To see this young 19-year-old find meaning in that song … she was bringing it to a whole other level that I had never heard before,” Davis mentioned.
Davis moved to signal her rapidly.
“[My mother] knew how knowledgeable Clive was of music, of songs, of lyrics and melody,” Houston mentioned of that life-changing assembly to Entertainment Tonight. “What to listen for is what he and I went through in those offices. … We love beautiful love songs. We love classic melodies. We love songs that tell stories of life and love. … I think we’re both romantic at heart. That’s what makes us very close.”
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Yet when Davis started lining up producers and songwriters to work on what would develop into Houston’s self-titled, history-making 1985 opening salvo — Whitney Houston stays one of many biggest-selling debut albums by a feminine singer — he had one eyebrow-raising stipulation.
“Anything that was too Black sounding was sent back to the studio,” former Arista advertising and marketing director Kenneth Reynolds mentioned within the 2017 documentary Whitney Houston: Can I Be Me? “And to say Black sounding, if you have a problem with that, is to say it’s too George Clinton, it’s too Funkadelic, it’s just too R&B. We want Joni Mitchell … we want Barbra Streisand.”
And thus we’ve got the unvarnished dichotomy of a music trade titan who, all through his 66 years within the enterprise, has been each lionized and vilified. Dyana Williams, an influential radio host, neighborhood activist, and co-creator of Black Music Month, praised Davis, the hit man who, throughout his stint with Columbia, made such music-shifting signings as Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, and Earth, Wind & Fire.
“I know people have their [valid] criticisms of him, but Clive Davis remains one of the most prolific A&R executives and label presidents,” Williams informed Andscape. “He had a lot of success with Columbia Records, a lot of success with Arista, and a lot of success with J Records. And those labels were elevated by Black music, so it wasn’t lost on Clive to continue to do business with Black folks.”
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Davis started his profession as normal authorized counsel at CBS subsidiary Columbia Records and rose to administrative vp and normal supervisor by 1965. In 1972, he commissioned a Harvard Business School report titled “A Study of the Soul Music Environment,” which examined the rising business energy of Black music and the way the trade might higher capitalize on it.
At Columbia, Davis leaned into that shift.
In the early Nineteen Seventies, the label expanded its focus and partnered with Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff’s Philadelphia International Records, producing hits from Billy Paul (“Me and Mrs. Jones”), Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes (“If You Don’t Know Me by Now”), and The O’Jays (“Back Stabbers”).
The strategy grew to become a template throughout the trade and a flash level: Critics argued that main, white-led labels have been capitalizing on Black music’s development whereas squeezing out impartial, Black-owned corporations.
That rigidity would come to outline Davis’ profession, and nowhere was it extra seen than in his shaping of Whitney Houston.
Even as he leaned into the business energy of Black music, Davis remained a pop obsessive, pushing Houston towards crossover success that may make her one of many best-selling artists on this planet and, at instances, drawing criticism that she was being steered too removed from her roots.
By 1989, that strategy had made Houston one of many world’s best-selling acts. Fueled by a string of Davis-stamped hits comparable to “I Wanna Dance with Somebody (Who Loves Me),” her sophomore album, Whitney, would go on to promote greater than 25 million copies. But that very same 12 months, she was famously booed on the Soul Train Awards for sounding “too white.”
“You’re not Black enough for them,” Houston mentioned in an interview in regards to the stinging criticism, which might in the end encourage her to embrace her soul and church roots over the subsequent decade. “You’re not R&B enough. You’re very pop. The white audience has taken you away from them.”
“It bothered her and me,” Davis later informed Vibe. “I mean, Whitney is a Black woman. It’s silly and shallow, the criticism you get when you cross over.”
Clive Davis within the Sixties.Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
He was born in Brooklyn, New York, on April 4, 1932. After shedding his mother and father as an adolescent, he moved to Queens, New York, together with his sister. The preliminary plan was to pursue a authorized profession. After incomes a political science diploma from New York University College of Arts and Science, Davis obtained a full scholarship to Harvard Law School and graduated in 1956.
It was at Columbia Records that he scored a job as a contract lawyer. That’s when Davis’ profession path took an sudden flip.
“I accidentally discovered I had a totally unexpected and unexplained gift – ears,” he mentioned. “This was quite a surprise, but I could, and would, discover great all-time artists.”
Yet Davis’ profession got here perilously near crashing and burning.
In the spring of ’73, he was embroiled in a payola scandal involving a CBS worker with alleged mob ties. There have been claims that the label was implicated in bribery and different misconduct tied to radio promotion, in response to Time. Davis was accused of misappropriating $94,000 in company funds and falsifying expense studies. He was charged with tax evasion and pleaded responsible on one depend, however he was later exonerated on rather more severe fraud fees.
Davis, who was subsequently fired, known as the ordeal a “witch hunt,” and shortly based Arista Records in November 1974. Fifteen years later, he partnered with L.A. Reid and Babyface on LaFace Records, a deal that fueled a Nineties run anchored by Toni Braxton and TLC. Through LaFace, he additionally backed the early releases of OutKast and Goodie Mob, serving to to push Atlanta’s hip-hop scene into the mainstream.
Davis additionally took an opportunity on Sean “Diddy” Combs’ fledgling New York-based Bad Boy Records in 1994. The distribution pact by Arista helped launch the multiplatinum, larger-than-life hip-hop big the Notorious B.I.G. and acclaimed R&B songstress Faith Evans, amongst others.
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Immediately after Davis’ demise, tributes poured in. Alicia Keys posted about her Rock Hall of Fame inductee and mentor, calling him “the Rock… who transformed dreams into reality, leaving an indelible mark on music and lives worldwide.”
Springsteen mentioned of Davis through Instagram, “At 22 years old, he changed my life when he signed me to Columbia Records. … He treated me with the same respect and kindness as a 22-year-old nobody as he did after all my success. A great man. All our prayers and love.”
Guitar legend Carlos Santana praised the person who orchestrated his surprising 1999 comeback Supernatural, the multiplatinum, Grammy-winning Album of the Year: “Clive Davis was a visionary. He could hear the intangible before anyone else could see it. He believed in Santana from the beginning, and years later he believed in us again. That kind of faith is a beautiful blessing, and I will always be grateful.”
And music nice Stevie Wonder lauded Davis’ uncompromising drive to push his artists past systemic racial boundaries.
“He, I think, gave them unconditional appreciation for their talent, for their gift,” Wonder mentioned in a CNN interview Monday. “He would go through any windows, any doors, any places to get them heard. It wasn’t about, ‘Well, we can’t play them on this station.’ It was as the world should be. It should be color-free.”
Left to proper: Babyface, Clive Davis and Monica onstage throughout the 2025 Apollo Theater Spring Benefit at The Apollo Theater on June 4, 2025, in New York City.Shahar Azran/Getty Images
Of course, critics of Davis will nonetheless have their say. They will level to his alleged callous remedy of the late R&B vocalist Phyllis Hyman, who steadily clashed with the label head over the creative path of her music. According to these in Hyman’s camp, her refusal to go pop prompted Davis to commit his consideration to the extra malleable Houston, dropping Hyman from Arista in 1984.
“Clive Davis taught me to never be afraid, because I was terrorized by him,” Hyman later mentioned in an interview earlier than her demise by suicide in 1995. “Whether he meant to do it or not, I’ll never know.”
As for his relationship with Houston, there have been the proverbial highs and lows. Yes, Davis guided essentially the most celebrated vocalist of her era to unprecedented international success, as she would go on to promote greater than 200 million albums worldwide. But Davis has confronted accusations that he wasn’t attentive sufficient when it got here to the celebrity’s struggles with medicine.
It all got here to a head at some point earlier than the 54th annual Grammys in 2012, when Houston’s physique was tragically present in a bath on the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles. Davis was set to host his legendary pre-Grammy social gathering downstairs at the exact same resort. Most individuals in attendance thought the much-anticipated shindig ought to have been canceled out of respect for the beloved Houston.
Davis, nonetheless, pushed on, asserting that Whitney would have wished the present to go on.
“I thought that was complete insanity,” Houston’s buddy and idol Chaka Khan mentioned throughout an emotional CNN sit-down. “And knowing Whitney, I don’t believe that she would have said the show must go on.”
And so we’re left with a towering, combined legacy. Clive Davis will go down as arguably essentially the most influential music mogul, with a attain so intensive that his wealthy, numerous portfolio spans from discovering the horn-driven, pop-rock-jazz group Chicago in 1968 to signing American Idol alumnus and future Oscar winner Jennifer Hudson to J Records in 2006.
“At the end of the day, there has been no one quite like Clive Davis,” Williams mentioned. “He will forever be a vital part of the history of the music business.”
Flaws and all.
Keith “Murph” Murphy is a senior editor at VIBE Magazine and frequent contributor at Billboard, AOL, and CBS Local. The veteran journalist has appeared on CNN, FOX News and A&E Biography and can also be the creator of the boys’s way of life e-book “Manifest XO.”
