At the end of 1999, as Arista was celebrating a record sales year, BMG executives tried to force Mr. Davis into retirement. Artists rallied loudly to his defense \u2014 \u201cIf Clive leaves, I leave,\u201d Ms. Franklin told The Los Angeles Times \u2014 and a chastened BMG agreed to finance a new label, J, with $150 million. Mr. Davis would own 50 percent.<\/p>\n
J got its name from Mr. Davis\u2019s middle initial, which he shares with his three sons, Fred, Mitchell and Doug. They survive him, along with a daughter, Lauren Davis; eight grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; and his partner, Greg Schriefer. Mr. Davis\u2019s marriages to Helen Cohen and Janet Adelberg ended in divorce.<\/p>\n
In 2000, Mr. Davis was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a nonperformer and, in his later years, he began to tend to his legacy. In 2002, he donated $5 million to endow the Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, an undergraduate program at N.Y.U.\u2019s Tisch School of the Arts that prepares students for careers in the music industry; in 2011, he gave another $5 million, and the program was renamed the Clive Davis Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n His Grammy parties remained highlights of each awards season, attended by music stars and boldface names from business and politics. (Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker of the House, and Tim Cook, the former chief executive of Apple, were frequent guests.)<\/p>\n