Clive Davis, Towering Music Executive Who Reshaped American Sound, Dies at 94

UNITED STATES – Clive Davis, the record company lawyer who became one of the music industry’s most powerful figures, launching or resurrecting the careers of such superstars as Whitney Houston, Carlos Santana and Alicia Keys, died at the age of 94.

As an incomparable hitmaker, Davis was highly adaptable and could span genres and generations, even as he entered his 80s. For every Janis Joplin he discovered in 1960s rock, there was a Sean “P. Diddy” Combs he mentored in hip-hop in the 1990s and a Kelly Clarkson he guided in pop in the 2000s.

Davis died in his Manhattan apartment, weeks after being hospitalized for an upper respiratory issue.