Ethel deNagy Gabriel, birthday November 16, 1921, is one of America's first female record producers in American music business with a 4 decade career at RCA Records.
Gabriel grew up in the Philadelphia area, learning the music business as a trombone player and bandleader of her own dance band in the 1930s. She later started working at RCA's record factory in Camden, New Jersey to earn a living in support of her music studies at Temple University. She eventually became a producer at RCA, achieving notability as the first woman to become a record label producer, and became head of the "Pure Gold" label. She won six Emmy Awards and produced fifteen Gold records out of over twenty-five hundred releases to her credit. Gold records include hits by Elvis Presley, Perry Como, Al Hirt, Roger Whitaker, Henry Mancini, among others. Throughout the 1950s, her work with George Melachrino's Strings and Orchestra was sold as life-enhancing soundtracks for relaxing, dining, studying, daydreaming, romance or building courage and confidence. Her Living Strings series, introduced in 1959, enjoyed a 22-year run, featuring orchestras playing the pop hits of the day. She was also primarily responsible for igniting a mambo craze in the United States, when her production of Peréz Prado's "Apple Pink and Cherry Blossom White" spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard chart in 1955.
Gabriel grew up in the Philadelphia area, learning the music business as a trombone player and bandleader of her own dance band in the 1930s. She later started working at RCA's record factory in Camden, New Jersey to earn a living in support of her music studies at Temple University. She eventually became a producer at RCA, achieving notability as the first woman to become a record label producer, and became head of the "Pure Gold" label. She won six Emmy Awards and produced fifteen Gold records out of over twenty-five hundred releases to her credit. Gold records include hits by Elvis Presley, Perry Como, Al Hirt, Roger Whitaker, Henry Mancini, among others. Throughout the 1950s, her work with George Melachrino's Strings and Orchestra was sold as life-enhancing soundtracks for relaxing, dining, studying, daydreaming, romance or building courage and confidence. Her Living Strings series, introduced in 1959, enjoyed a 22-year run, featuring orchestras playing the pop hits of the day. She was also primarily responsible for igniting a mambo craze in the United States, when her production of Peréz Prado's "Apple Pink and Cherry Blossom White" spent 10 weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard chart in 1955.
