Ethel Gabriel

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Ethel deNagy Gabriel (born November 16, 1921) is one of America's first female record producers in American music business and enjoys legendary acclaim for producing and representing some of the best known music entertainers during her 4-decade career at RCA Records.

Growing up around Philadelphia, she learned the music business from the ground up as a trombone player who lead her own dance band in the 1930s and later started in RCA's record factory in Camden, New Jersey to earn a living in support of her music studies at Temple University. At RCA she worked her way through the ranks and eventually become RCA's first woman producer and head of the "Pure Gold" label and an icon in American music. She won six Emmy Awards and produced 15 Gold records out of over 2500 releases to her credit. Gold records included hits by music greats Elvis Presley, Perry Como, Al Hirt, Roger Whitaker, Henry Mancini, and others.

At RCA she was the initiator of the company's Nashville studios and was leading in the experiments and methods of electronically improving and influencing the sound of music, such as simulating the first stereo sounds by shifting sound between speakers. She was first to release a disco record and the first digital album.

Ethel Gabriel served as A&R representative for singers Perry Como, Cleo Laine and Roger Whitaker. Under her direction RCA issued recordings by Dolly Parton, Jim Reeves, Henry Mancini, Perry Como, Arthur Fiedler and the Boston Pops Orchestra, Peter Nero, Neil Sedaka. Frank Sinatra with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, and many other artists, achieving top record sales for many of these artists.

Gabriel created "The Living Strings" series of albums, which were easy-listening instrumental string versions of popular tunes. They had great success as they spawned other "Living" ventures, such as the Living Jazz. She was also the mastermind for the sound and direction of George Melachrino's "Music for Moods" movement that yielded the essential titles Music for Dining, Music for Daydreaming, Music for Faith and Inner Calm. Ethel Gabriel was instrumental in kicking off the Mambo craze in the United States by her work on the record "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White," with Perez Prado, a leading hit record for 10 weeks in 1955.

She has won a 1983 Grammy Award in the Best Historical Album category for The Tommy Dorsey/Frank Sinatra Sessions - Vols. 1, 2 & 3.

In 1984 Gabriel left RCA and thereafter formed her own record label, JazzMania Records.

Ethel Gabriel is a graduate of Temple University and Columbia University and spent most of her career in New York City. She is the wife of the late Gus Gabriel, President of Dunhill Publishing Company (New York City). She resides in the Pocono mountain region of Pennsylvania.