Goddard Lieberson

Goddard Lieberson (April 5, 1911 – May 29, 1977) was the president of Columbia Records from 1956 to 1971, and again from 1973 to 1975. He became president of the Recording Industry Association of America in 1964. He was also a composer, and studied with George Frederick McKay, at the University of Washington, Seattle. He married Vera Zorina in 1946 and with her had 2 children.

Biography Lieberson was born to a Jewish family on April 5, 1911, in Hanley in Staffordshire; his father was a manufacturer of rubber shoe heels who took his family to the United States when Lieberson was a child. He studied classical piano and composition at the Eastman School of Music in the 1930s and after graduating he wrote classical concert reviews under the pseudonym "Johann Sebastian". He was married to actress/dancer Vera Zorina from 1946 until his death in 1977. They had two sons: Peter Lieberson, a composer, and Jonathan Lieberson. Lieberson was noted for his personal elegance, taste and style, and was renowned as a wit, bon vivant and international traveller, whose circle of friends and acquaintances included Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Richard Rodgers, W. Somerset Maugham, Noël Coward and John Gielgud.

He was promoted to president of Columbia Records from 1956 to 1971 and again from 1973 to 1975. In 1957, Temple University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Music degree. In 1966, in a reorganization, Columbia Records became subsidiary to the newly formed CBS/Columbia Group. In 1967, Lieberson promoted Clive Davis to president of Columbia Records.

In 1977, Lieberson co-wrote and produced the CBS-TV special They Said it with Music: From Yankee Doodle to Ragtime, a salute to American songwriters throughout the ages, starring Bernadette Peters, Tony Randall, Jason Robards, Jean Stapleton and Flip Wilson, with appearances by Thurl Ravenscroft and Jimmy Griffin, a founding member of the soft-rock band Bread. The show aired July 4, thirty-seven days after Lieberson died of cancer in New York City on May 29, 1977, aged 66.

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