To shake up Columbia’s button-down corporate culture, he had his salesmen read Rolling Stone magazine — an act of “heresy” at the label of “My Fair Lady” and the piano virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz, a former colleague, Dick Asher, later recalled, according to Fredric Dannen’s book “Hit Men: Power Brokers and Fast Money Inside the Music Business” (1990).
Within a few years, Columbia’s profits skyrocketed, validating his approach.
But Mr. Davis’s fast-moving career had a painful setback on May 29, 1973, when Columbia fired him and filed a lawsuit accusing him of using $94,000 in company funds (about $700,000 today) to pay for personal expenses, including apartment renovations and the bar mitzvah of one his sons. Mr. Davis said an underling had forged invoices without his knowledge.
Dragged Into ‘Drugola’
His dismissal from Columbia came as federal authorities announced a string of arrests as part of an investigation into payola and drugs in the music industry, and for months Mr. Davis’s name was attached to sensational news reports of “drugola.” He and his lawyers said then — and Mr. Davis contended ever since — that he had been made a scapegoat to protect CBS and its all-important broadcast licenses.
Mr. Davis was never charged with payola but, in 1975, he was indicted on six counts of filing false income tax reports. He pleaded guilty to one count — failing to pay taxes on $8,800 in vacation expenses (about $55,000 today) — and paid a $10,000 fine. At his sentencing hearing, the judge scolded the news media for smearing his name.
By then, Mr. Davis was already rebounding.
In 1974, he took over the foundering Bell label and renamed it Arista, after the New York branches of the National Honor Society, of which Mr. Davis had been a proud member as a high school student. He quickly scored a No. 1 hit with “Mandy,” by one of the few Bell acts that he kept on the label: Mr. Manilow.
Arista built a diverse roster in the 1970s, including Patti Smith, the Kinks, Lou Reed, Gil Scott-Heron and Melissa Manchester, and Mr. Davis developed a specialty of reviving the careers of faded female vocalists. The first was Dionne Warwick, in 1979, with “I’ll Never Love This Way Again,” which became her first Top Five solo single in a decade. Then came Ms. Franklin, whose 1985 album, “Who’s Zoomin’ Who?,” became her first million-seller.
