Women In Music Pioneers: Groundbreaking Female Executives
From the first recording session for Elvis Presley to the launch of the Grammy Awards, women have played an essential role in music business milestones, often with less acknowledgement than male executives. In honor of Women’s History Month, and to coincide with Billboard’s 2022 Women in Music issue, we recognize six female pioneers who shaped the music industry.
Ethel Gabriel
Ethel Gabriel
When Gabriel died at the age of 99 in March 2021, her nephew, Ed Mauro, told The New York Times that her success in music came “when the playing field wasn’t level.” Gabriel — considered to be the first female producer to work for a record label — had another take: She told The Cincinnati Enquirer in 1983: “I didn’t know I was somewhere I shouldn’t be.”
The Pennsylvania native affixed labels to records and packed them for shipment at the RCA Victor plant in Camden, N.J., before moving to the company’s corporate offices in New York. With RCA, she worked as an A&R executive and eventual vice president, championing the signing of Pérez Prado to help bring mambo to the United States and creating the Living Strings, Pure Gold and A Legendary Performer series. Gabriel produced over 2,500 albums — 15 of them certified gold — and won a Grammy Award for best historical album in 1982. —GARY GRAFF
Marion Keisker
Marion Keisker
On July 18, 1953, while working as an office receptionist at Sam Phillips’ Sun Records in Memphis, Keisker welcomed 18-year-old Elvis Presley to the building. He came in with $4 to record two songs, “My Happiness” and “That’s When Your Heartaches Begin,” for his “mama,” she says. Keisker, who was also a radio host and station manager at WREC Memphis, wanted to know more. “Who do you sound like?” she asked Presley. His reply: “I don’t sound like nobody.”
When Keisker alerted Phillips and his partners to the walk-in session, the gentlemen rebuffed her and then left the studio for coffee — but she decided she would make the record herself. Keisker, who later became a captain in the U.S. Air Force and Memphis chapter president of the National Organization for Women, has had her pivotal role in Presley’s ascent well-documented, including in three biopics about The King.
—DEBORAH WILKER
Christine Farnon
Christine Farnon
Decades before Deborah Dugan became the Recording Academy’s first female president/CEO in 2019, Farnon was the top executive at the organization — and while she never held the big title, there was no question of who was in charge.
Farnon started as a volunteer in May 1957 when the academy was in its formative stages and rose to become executive vp. From 1957 through 1987, she worked alongside a succession of 18 elected, volunteer presidents. These men — and yes, they were all men — served their terms and moved on, while she provided continuity and stability. In 1988, Michael Greene became the academy’s first paid president. Farnon stayed on through 1992 to ensure a smooth transition.
Farnon received a trustees award from the academy upon her retirement. A tribute to her in that year’s Grammy program book was fittingly titled “The Recording Academy’s Guiding Light.” —PAUL GREIN
Suzanne de Passe
Suzanne de Passe
Joining Motown Records in the late 1960s as creative assistant to founder Berry Gordy, Suzanne de Passe had ascended to president of its TV/film division, Motown Productions, when MCA Records bought the label in 1988. De Passe’s remarkable journey encompassed bringing cornerstone acts — The Jackson 5, Commodores and Lionel Richie — to the Motown family, as well as producing award-winning TV specials and miniseries like Motown 25: Yesterday, Today, Forever, which featured Michael Jackson’s famous moonwalking performance of “Billie Jean.”
“I couldn’t type, but I could think,” recalls de Passe, now co-chairwoman of de Passe Jones Entertainment. “ ‘Listen to this music.’ ‘See this act.’ ‘Read this script.’ Gordy gave me so many incredible opportunities to learn and grow in a company where I never had to apologize for being Black. And being so busy surviving the challenges of my job, the idea of trailblazing was the last thing on my mind.” —GAIL MITCHELL
María de Jesús “Chuyita” Lizárraga
María de Jesús “Chuyita” Lizárraga
Chuyita manages the 133-employee organization that oversees Mexican supergroup Banda El Recodo and its younger sister group, Banda Los Recoditos. She has been their driving force since 1970, when, at 25 years old, she married El Recodo founder and then-bandleader Cruz Lizárraga, who was more than twice her age: “I told him, ‘I don’t know about music,” she says, “but if you trust me, I’ll help with the business.’”
The young bride began her career booking shows. Today, she is recognized as the grand dame of Mexican music, and El Recodo, which will turn 84 in October, is known as “the mother of bands,” with nine Latin Grammy Award wins and 52 entries on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart. While brothers Alfonso and Joel Lizárraga have led the group since Cruz’s death in 1995, Chuyita still oversees “bookings, clients, distribution, logistics, everything,” she says. “At 77, I haven’t lost my desire to work.” —LEILA COBO
Bonnie Garner
Bonnie Garner
By the time Garner landed at Columbia Records in New York as the first woman on the A&R team, she had already booked the Grateful Dead for Playboy After Dark, brought Jimi Hendrix onto Dick Cavett’s talk show and interviewed to be Mick Jagger’s assistant. But it was at Columbia Nashville where she made her lasting mark as the first female vp of A&R, working with Willie Nelson, George Jones and Johnny Cash in the 1970s and 1980s before moving into management.
The key to her success was supporting talent: “You have to make it easy for them,” she says. But she also knew when to put her foot down. When the notoriously tardy Jones kept Elvis Costello waiting in the studio, Garner called his assistant and told him to tell Jones that “his mama taught him better than this.” A chastened Jones showed up shortly thereafter. —MELINDA NEWMAN
This story originally appeared in Billboard’s 2022 Women in Music issue, dated Feb. 26, 2022.
