Clive Davis helped launch Billy Joel's path to superstardom

Clive Davis had an ear for the kind of talent known on a first-name basis: Aretha, Janis, Bruce, Whitney.

And, of course, Billy.

Davis, who died Monday at 94, is the man who gave Billy Joel an early boost toward superstardom. When the two met, Joel was a fledgling singer-songwriter from Hicksville with one solo album to his credit while Davis was the president of Columbia Records who had already signed Santana, Janis Joplin (with Big Brother and the Holding Company) and Aerosmith. Davis brought Joel into the Columbia stable, resulting in the song and album that gave the singer his lifelong nickname, "Piano Man."

In 1972, Joel was doing his best to support "Cold Spring Harbor," a little-loved solo debut on Family Productions Records that, infamously, had been mastered at the wrong speed. While playing a concert that was broadcast on the Philadelphia radio station WMMR, Joel included an unrecorded song, "Captain Jack," inspired by watching a drug-dealer operate in a housing project across the street from his Oyster Bay apartment. The live track quickly became a regional favorite.

"The prevalence of the song in the hallways at the Columbia offices at Black Rock on 52nd Street even had company president Clive Davis wondering what a ‘Captain Jack’ was," according to an essay posted at The Library of Congress in 2015, the year Joel’s "Piano Man" single was inducted. Atlantic Records was interested in signing Joel, but he opted instead for Columbia.

"Columbia was Bob Dylan's label," Joel said, according to his official website. "That was the deciding factor. At this time, you were allowed to build your career through FM radio, album tracks, concerts, singles and Bob Dylan was iconic for not being a hit singles type of artist. This was a company that knows how to build a career with an artist, so we decided to go with Columbia."

By then Joel had already relocated to Los Angeles, where his time spent playing in a dive bar would provide the raw material for "Piano Man." A rueful, waltzing ballad about drunks and dreamers, the song became Joel’s first major hit, reaching No. 25 on the Billboard charts.

Joel would go on to sell millions of albums for Columbia and notch 33 Top Forty hits. Both he and Davis would be inducted into the Long Island Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame, Joel in 2006, Davis in 2014.

"When you discover a rock and roll artist, you are discovering someone who is self-contained," Davis told Charlie Rose in 2013. "You are waiting for that artist."

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com