21 Music Legends Developed, Signed or Boosted by Clive Davis’ Golden Touch
The late record executive impacted the careers of many stars, including Whitney Houston, Bruce Springsteen, Santana, Aerosmith, Chicago and more.
Black News 
Legendary label executive Clive Davis was known in the music business as the man with the “golden ears.” While some suits shy away from involvement in the creative side of music making, Davis, who passed away on Monday (June 22) at the age of 94, relished the opportunity to help artists he signed achieve their biggest hits. Over the course of his decades-long career in the record business, beginning in the 1960s as an in-house lawyer for Columbia Records, Davis had a hand in developing the careers and songs of iconic talents like Janis Joplin, Whitney Houston, Jennifer Hudson and many more. He also took veteran acts like Santana and Aretha Franklin and helped them launch into extremely popular second acts in their careers.
Perhaps most famously, Davis’ golden ears played a pivotal role in the production of Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” for the soundtrack to her 1992 film The Bodyguard. Co-star Kevin Costner is said to have suggested that Houston recorded the first part of the song a cappella, and while the song’s producer, David Foster, and others at the label pushed back on this idea, Davis insisted that those first 40 seconds remain a capella.
Davis and Costner’s plan worked — Houston’s rendition of “I Will Always Love You” topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 14 weeks and remains one of her most iconic works. In an interview with 60 Minutes in 2004, Davis argued that all along it was his gut that guided his success, not his ears or any specific proclivity for music. “I did not have a background in music, period,” Davis said. “It’s your gut. It’s the tingle up your spine. It’s your ears. Whatever the anatomy part that it is, I found that it is a natural gift.”
