(June 28, 2026) – With Black Music Month nearing an end and this year’s BET Awards upon us (airing Sunday, June 28), and with music icon Jermaine Dupri urging the entertainment network to do a special tribute to the late Clive Davis for his contributions, I pondered this: How should history remember the late music mogul? More pertinent to this blog, how should I – a not-so-casual fan of dozens of the artists whose music he introduced to the world – recall a man as controversial as he was?
Should I portray him during Black Music Month as the visionary record executive who fostered the careers of some of the greatest voices and musicians in popular music? Including Black musicians who might not have had the chance to realize their dreams otherwise?
Or should I remember that he was another powerful industry titan who amassed enormous wealth while many of the artists whose gifts built that fortune wrestled with personal, financial, or emotional struggles of their own?
Or even more specifically, should he be praised for recognizing early on — as had Ahmet Ertegun at Atlantic Records and Jim Stewart and Estelle Acton at Stax — that America might have greater love for Black music and culture than the people who make it, and then capitalizing on that notion?
The honest answer may be all of the above.
Few non-performing figures have exercised greater influence over American popular music than Clive Davis. His fingerprints were everywhere for more than six decades – from Janis Joplin and Santana to Barry Manilow, Alicia Keys, Jennifer Hudson, and, most famously, Whitney Houston. In Black music especially, his impact was enormous. He recognized talent others overlooked, resurrected careers others considered finished and repeatedly demonstrated an uncanny ability to know not only what audiences wanted to hear, but what trends they would soon embrace.
Nowhere was that more evident than during the mid-1980s, when Arista Records – which Davis founded after being ousted from Columbia Records in 1973 – became home to an extraordinary succession of Black female stars spanning multiple generations. Davis helped engineer Aretha Franklin’s comeback, highlighted by “Freeway of Love,” her biggest pop hit since “Until You Come Back to Me” twelve years earlier. He similarly revived Dionne Warwick’s chart fortunes, leading to the charity blockbuster “That’s What Friends Are For,” which became her first No. 1 in eleven years. At the same time, he was overseeing the rise of a 22-year-old Whitney Houston and guiding her ascent to global superstardom. In fact, it was Houston’s “How Will I Know” that replaced Warwick’s “Friends” at No. 1 on the Hot 100 – a symbolic passing of the torch between cousins and from one musical generation to the next, all under the same record executive.
Yet Clive Davis’ legacy has never been measured solely in platinum records. His career also became intertwined with some of the music industry’s most enduring controversies. There was the expense-account scandal (and unsubstantiated allegations of payola) that ended his presidency at Columbia, the Milli Vanilli lip-sync debacle that engulfed Arista in 1990 (of which Davis claimed he had no prior knowledge until it blew up), and his backing of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ fledgling Bad Boy Entertainment, the record company whose enormous commercial success during the ‘90s unfolded alongside hip-hop’s darkest moment: the East Coast-vs.-West Coast rivalry that ended with the deaths of Tupac Shakur and Christopher “The Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace.
There were also allegations that an all-knowing powerful executive like Davis must have had the inside scoop on Milli Vanilli’s lip-sync scam — as surviving member Fab Morvan holds to this day — long before it became public knowledge that resulted in their 1990 Grammys being rescinded, and years before the personal demise of fellow former member Rob Pilatus who died of a drug overdose in 1998.
There were also accounts of the artists who, under Davis, never saw their careers reach the heights their talents richly deserved. One of the most talked-about was Phyllis Hyman – the sultry sounding soulstress whose professional relationship with Davis began when Arista acquired Buddah Records in 1978. Reportedly, Davis had envisioned Hyman as a major future pop star and even had Barry Manilow — Arista’s biggest pop star at the time — produce her hit “Somewhere in My Lifetime,” the title track and first R&B chart single from her debut Arista album.
But Hyman, whose follow-up album produced “You Know How to Love Me” – a top 20 R&B and disco hit in 1979 – wanted to remain true to her Black sounding roots, a decision that reportedly created tension with Davis and ultimately led Arista to drop Hyman around the same time the label signed Whitney Houston in 1984. Both Hyman and Houston eventually succumbed to drug overdoses before reaching their 50th birthdays, with Hyman’s death ruled a suicide following a bipolar diagnosis years earlier.
Houston perhaps represents the greatest Davis-related paradox of all. Except for maybe Berry Gordy with Diana Ross, no record executive did more to transform a Black woman into one of the biggest stars in recording history. At the same time, Houston’s heartbreaking decline and tragic death in 2012 prompted millions to question where the responsibilities of a record executive ends and those of a mentor and protector begin. It didn’t help that Davis continued with plans to hold his annual pre-Grammy gala on the same night she died – while her body still lay cold in the venue’s hotel room – a decision many blasted as insensitive given what Houston meant to the mogul’s fortunes and the industry in general.
As I reflect on Clive Davis’ life, I also must acknowledge my own place in this story. I cannot pretend I experienced him only through the lens of today’s morally centered debates. I experienced him first through the music itself. Like millions of others, I bought the records, celebrated Aretha’s comeback, marveled at Whitney’s astonishing rise, cheered Dionne Warwick’s return to the top, was fervently entrenched on the Bad Boy Records side of hip-hop’s nastiest feud, and yes even declared — with dignity somehow still intact — that Milli Vanilli’s “Baby Don’t Forget My Number” was my favorite pop single of 1989. I was a willing and happy participant in the marketplace that made Clive Davis one of the most powerful men the music business has ever known. Only with the benefit of hindsight did I and others begin asking harder questions about Davis’ tactics and the machinery behind the music we loved.
Perhaps that’s why it’s taken me nearly a week to attempt to eulogize the man. I can’t celebrate him without acknowledging the dubious aspects of his legacy, nor can I dismiss him by ignoring the remarkable artistry he helped bring into my living room.
Yes, for every Whitney Houston there were probably ten Phyllis Hymans and Angela Bofills, and not just at Arista Records. But Davis also recognized the potential greatness of favorite bands like Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, and Earth Wind & Fire when no one else either could or would. He helped cement Columbia Records as a rock music force with the signings of acts like Joplin and Santana, and later with Pink Floyd, Aerosmith, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen. His greatest strength was recognizing commercial greatness before almost anyone else. His second greatest may have been his knack for getting those artists on the playlists of radio stations all over the country, by whatever means deemed necessary.
As evidence of that last power, saxophonist Kenny G recalled during a CNN interview last week how Davis went to radio stations nationwide and “forced” them to play the song that would become Kenny’s first top 40 chart hit, “Songbird,” in 1987. Before then, the only major instrumental hits during the 1980s were associated with movies or TV soundtracks.
Since Davis’ passing, conspiracy theories have flooded the internet about a more nefarious role he might have played in the demises of prominent artists once signed to him and even some who weren’t, with few of the rumors being substantiated. The small irony is that the many “influencers” posting the theories are attempting to capitalize on Davis’ death in much the same way they accuse him of being one of the biggest purveyors of a capitalist industry.
It would be naïve to imagine Davis – a man whose parents both died before his 19th birthday and a product of the industry – to stand on some moral high ground and turn away opportunities that made him a rich man while making others rich around him. In that sense, is it reasonable to hold contempt for a man whose artists and music we instinctively consume (and will continue to do so)? Will we turn the music off or hit “skip” when we correctly remember that few, if any, of those artists lived to see their 94th birthdays or even attained a fraction of the wealth they helped Davis achieve.
For better or for worse, Clive Davis influenced the soundtrack of the past sixty years – my entire lifetime. In many cases, he not only recognized talent but decided what made the playlist in the first place. While his business-at-the-expense-of-artists-well-being and notorious strong-arm tactics in the industry were not the first – or last – of their kind, few executives wielded them as effectively as Davis did. Fewer still have left behind a musical legacy as brilliant, as consequential, and as complicated.
Perhaps that’s why Rock and Roll Heaven has a special set of rules that make Clive Davis eligible for entry.
If so, may he rest well there.
Clive Davis (1932 – 2026)
DJRob
DJRob (he/him) is a freelance music blogger from the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, disco, pop, rock and country genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff! You can follow him on Bluesky at @djrobblog.bsky.social, X (formerly Twitter) at @djrobblog, on Facebook or on Meta’s Threads.
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