On this date in 1932, music producer Clive Jay Davis (pronounced Klyve) was born to Florence (née Brooks) and Herman Davis in Brooklyn, N.Y. His father was an electrician and traveling tie salesman. His mother had a connection to the Russeks department store in Manhattan. They named him after Clive Brook, the English movie star who played opposite Marlene Dietrich that year in “Shanghai Express.”
His modest financial circumstances became even more tenuous when both parents died when he was a teen and he went to live with an older sister. He attended New York University, graduating magna cum laude in political science, then received a full scholarship to Harvard Law School and graduated in 1956. At age 29 he was named general counsel of Columbia Records, a CBS subsidiary that merged with CBS Records with Davis subsequently heading the new unit.
It was a heady time for music as the renowned “Summer of Love” dawned in the San Francisco area after the Monterey Pop Festival. Woodstock was on the horizon. Davis added upcoming artists like Janis Joplin, Santana, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Blood, Sweat & Tears, Aerosmith and Pink Floyd to the label.
But he championed genres besides rock and pop and in 1970 insisted that Lynn Anderson’s “Rose Garden” should be the country singer’s next release. The song crossed over, was a No. 1 hit in 16 countries and remained the biggest-selling song by a female country artist for 27 years.
CBS fired him in 1973 after accusing him of using company money for personal expenses, including for his son’s bar mitzvah. He founded Arista Records the next year and signed Barry Manilow, Aretha Franklin, Dionne Warwick, Patti Smith, The Outlaws, Eric Carmen, Kenny G, the Bay City Rollers, Milli Vanilli, Ace of Base, Air Supply, Ray Parker Jr. and Alicia Keys. Other artists who signed were Carly Simon, Melissa Manchester, the Grateful Dead, the Kinks, Gil Scott-Heron and Lou Reed.
The label’s most significant acquisition came in 1983 when Davis signed Whitney Houston, who became Arista’s top-selling act and one that sold over 220 million records. Davis was forced out of Arista in 2000 after the German company that was majority owner invoked its mandatory retirement policy. Davis joined the RCA Label Group until 2008, when he was named chief creative officer for Sony Music Entertainment, a title he held until his death.
Davis was married to Helen Cohen from 1956 to 1965 and to Janet Adelberg from 1965 to 1985; both marriages ended in divorce. He had three sons, Fred, Mitchell and Doug, and a daughter, Lauren. Among the survivors listed in his obituary was Greg Schriefer as his partner.
He had come out publicly at age 80 as bisexual in his autobiography “The Soundtrack of My Life” and told talk show host Katie Couric that he hoped the revelation, 14 years before his death at home in 2026 from respiratory failure, would lead to greater understanding of bisexuality.
As a producer, Davis won four Grammy Awards and was nominated for three others. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000 in the nonperformers category. The Hollywood Reporter credited his “golden ear” with elevating Joplin’s career and making “household names” of Springsteen, Whitney Houston, Carlos Santana, Aretha Franklin and others.
He was active professionally into the last months of his life. Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, presiding at his funeral in Manhattan, said “Clive did not wear his religiosity on his sleeve but he proudly identified as Jewish. … Even if Clive was not conventionally religious, he understood something very deep about the Jewish tradition, which he embodied so profoundly with the work of his life.” She added, “In the Torah, when God parts the Red Sea and the Israelites cross over into freedom, what does Moses do on the other side? He does not give a speech, he does not even pray: He sings.” (PBS.org, June 29, 2026)
When Buchdahl asked his children if there was any song he loved that he didn’t personally produce, they told her there was one that he talked about and it was “Over the Rainbow” by composer Harold Arlen and lyricist E.Y. “Yip” Harburg in 1938 for “The Wizard of Oz” movie. At the service, Buchdahl sang a soaring version of it. (D. 2026)
PHOTO: Davis at the 2025 New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center; photo by Bryan Berlin under CC 4.0.
