At that long-ago dinner party, I told Clive that, as a kid, I’d owned all of her Arista records—and played each one until its grooves were worn out.

“Which was your favorite?” he asked.

“Dionne Warwick: Hot! Live and Otherwise,” I told him.

“You’re the only one who bought it,” he said, laughing.

And so began an enduring friendship.

Clive was a warm, witty, and generous friend. And, boy, did he have stories. As a young lawyer for Columbia in 1964, he attended the Monterey Pop Festival. Surrounded by a sea of hippies, he recalled, “I was the only person wearing a white tennis sweater.” (You can pick him out of the crowd in D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary Monterey Pop.) Knocked out by Janis Joplin’s now legendary performance, Clive raced backstage to meet her. She wasn’t quite sure of what to make of someone who looked like he wanted to take her to lunch at the Southampton Racquet Club, but he cast his spell (nobody was more charming than Clive) and signed her to Columbia.

That was the beginning of a sea change at the label. For years, Columbia had turned up its nose at rock and roll. But as president from 1967 to 1973, Clive added to Columbia’s roster of artists Sly and the Family Stone, Earth, Wind & Fire, Aerosmith, and Billy Joel. After he was fired from the company in 1973—charged with fiddling expenses (which he vigorously denied)—he created Arista, which dominated the adult contemporary charts for nearly two decades.

Barry Manilow was the first breakout performer for Clive’s new label, scoring 13 number one hits, including “Mandy,” “I Can’t Smile Without You,” and “Looks Like We Made It.” Clive would go on to sign up talent across the spectrum, from Patti Smith (discovered at CBGB’s) to the Eurythmics.

When we met, I was the theater columnist for the New York Post. Clive, for all his success in rock and pop, loved musical theater. I took him to Broadway shows and, afterwards, over our frequent dinners at Orso, we’d discuss the Golden Age of musicals. His favorite was My Fair Lady. As much as he admired the contemporary songwriters who gave him so many hits, I could tell that his real heroes were Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II, Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Jerome Kern, and all the other members of the Great American Songbook. When Manilow once griped that he’d rather be known for his songs than his pop idol status, Clive snapped, “Well, if you were Irving Berlin, we’d know it by now!”

Clive Jay Davis was born in Brooklyn in 1932 to working-class Jewish parents. His mother died in 1947, and his father the following year. He moved in with relatives, to whom he remained devoted the rest of his life. He attended NYU, where years later he established the Clive Davis Institute for Recorded Music, and then Harvard Law. After graduating, he joined a top Manhattan law firm, but was bored. One of its clients was CBS, and Clive was able to land a legal job at Columbia Records, which CBS owned. When he told one of the firm’s partners that he was leaving to work there, the partner blanched. “You’re going into the music business? I would advise you not to do that. They wear gold chains.”

The president of Columbia at the time was Goddard Lieberson. He and his wife, Vera Zorina (a former ballet dancer), were among New York’s most elegant society couples. They hobnobbed with Jackie Kennedy, Somerset Maugham, Richard Rodgers, and Kitty Carlisle Hart. Lieberson mentored Clive, making sure he saw all the Broadway shows (Columbia produced most of the cast recordings) and introducing him to the label’s great classical conductors – Leonard Bernstein, Eugene Ormandy, George Szell. It was a heady time for a kid from Brooklyn. Watching Lieberson glide effortlessly among Manhattan’s elite, Clive, rising from general counsel to vice president and general manager, could see his future self. “Goddard,” he once told me, “taught me how to be a mogul in the corporate world.”