Music Producer
From entry level clerk to a corporation’s Vice President, she didn’t realize she was somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be
EG was born in Milmont Park, a Philadelphia suburb. Her father, who died when she was a teenager, was a machinist. Her mother was a homemaker who took up ceramic sculpture later in life.
EG studied trombone in her youth and formed a band, which she named using her initials at the time: EN and Her Royal Men, which played in the Philadelphia area.
FIRST JOB IN THE MUSIC INDUSTRY: ENTRY LEVEL CLERK
While attending Temple University, EG began working at RCA in nearby Camden, NJ, putting labels on records, then packing the records before advancing to “records tester.”
JOB PERFORMANCE LEADS TO ADDITIONAL RESPONSIBILITIES
Following college graduation, EG continued her studies at Columbia University in New York City while working at RCA’s offices in New York, including as secretary to the head of RCA’s Latin division, spending a lot of time listening in on studio sessions so eventually trade publications were referring to her as an “RCA Executive.”
MENTORING BUILDS BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS
EG’s devotion to learning the music production business caught the attention of her employer’s managers, who increasingly gave her more responsibilities. She began mentoring women in the company and occasionally provided guidance to men, who came to trust her business judgment. One of the men had an idea for an album but needed to raise some money to have it made, to attract the attention of RCA. EG listened to his idea, thought it had good business prospects and loaned him a small amount of money from her personal savings. By coincidence, that man was later hired by RCA and rose to a high executive position. EG then pitched ideas for music production to him. “Whatever she wanted to do, I would just say yes to. She was so calm and so knowledgeable and so self-sufficient.”
ACCEPTS RISKY CHALLENGE TO TURN AROUND STRUGGLING BUSINESS
EG’s instinct for understanding the record buying public’s interest in certain types of music was increasingly recognized by her managers. Eventually she oversaw RCA’s Camden Records division, a struggling “budget line” for RCA. She began the “Living Strings” series of easy-listening albums, which branched into other easy-listening lines and soon became a big profit center for RCA. Later, EG commented: “I’m sure (my boss) thought putting me in charge of a struggling business line was a way to get rid of me, but I made a multi-million-dollar line out of it, including conceiving the idea, the programming and the production.”
EG also achieved success in repackaging material from the RCA archives into albums that sold anew. She shared a Grammy Award for one album and eventually retired as a Vice President of RCA.
A male executive noted at that the time EG began her career at RCA, women were rarely given much responsibility, but she had developed a couple of deals which seemed speculative at the outset yet proved very profitable.
EG commented: “I didn’t know that I was somewhere I shouldn’t be.”
LESSON LEARNED
Thus, the lesson: “Make money for the company and they will leave you be.”
