April 4th

04-04-1932 Clive Davis – Born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York. He is an American record producer and music industry executive. Davis has won five Grammy Awards and is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. From 1967 to 1973, Davis was the president of Columbia Records. In June 1967, at the urging of his friend and business associate Lou Adler, Davis attended the Monterey Pop Festival. He immediately signed Janis Joplin with Big Brother & the Holding Company, and went on to sign Laura Nyro, Electric Flag, Santana, The Chambers Brothers,  Chicago, Billy Joel, Blood Sweat & Tears, Loggins & Messina, Aerosmith, Pink Floyd, and Bruce Springsteen. He was founder and president of Arista Records from 1975 to 2000 until founding J Records. From 2002 until April 2008, he was the chairman and CEO of the RCA Music Group, which included RCA Records, J Records, and Arista Records. Currently Davis is the chief creative officer of Sony Music Entertainment. He has played a part in the careers of TLC, Aretha Franklin, Rod Stewart, Alicia Keys, Barry Manilow, Christina Aguilera, Carlos Santana, Kelly Clarkson, Leona Lewis, and Jennifer Hudson. Davis is credited with bringing Whitney Houston to prominence. Davis has been married twice and has four children and also six grandchildren. In 2013, Davis publicly came out as bisexual in his autobiography The Soundtrack of My Life. On the daytime talk show Katie, he told host Katie Couric that he hoped his coming out would lead to “greater understanding” of bisexuality. Davis revealed he had his first sexual encounter with a man in the era of Studio 54. During the past twenty years he has had two monogamous relationships with men.

04-04-1932 – 09-12-1992 Anthony Perkins – Born in New York City, New York He was an American actor that was nominated for a Best Supporting Oscar in his second film, Friendly Persuasion. He is best known for playing Norman Bates in Psycho. Perkins has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, an honor he received for his influential and exceptional contributions to the motion picture industry. In 1991, he was honored with the Donostia Lifetime Achievement Award at the San Sebastián Film Festival. Although he was fighting AIDS, the actor appeared in eight television productions between 1990 and 1992. He made his final appearance in In Deep Wood (1992) with Rosanna Arquette. Although he was gay, he married photographer Berinthia “Berry” Berenson on August 9, 1973. They had two sons. Perkins died at his Los Angeles home on September 12, 1992, from AIDS-related pneumonia.

04-04-1861 — 06-28-1948   Alice Dannenberg – Born in Mitau, Russian Empire (what is now Latvia). She was an artist that moved to Paris by the end of the 19th century. In 1901, she began to exhibit her work with a group of Left Bank artists known as “Les Quelques” (The  Few) that also included the Swiss painter Martha Stettler. In 1902, Dannenberg and Stettler opened an art school, Académie de la Grande Chaumière. They were directors of the school from 1909 to 1945. Tamara de Lempicka was one of their students. Dannenberg was elected to the National Society of Fine Arts in 1911. In 1927, she received her French naturalization papers, and not long afterward she and Stettler moved to Fontenay-sous-Bois. The last exhibition that she participated in was in 1937. After WWII, she and Stettler moved to Châtillon, where she died in 1948. The two women had a forty-year relationship.