Don Grierson (music business)

Don Grierson
Don Grierson (right) accepting the Golden Apple Award from George Harrison
Background information
Born	August 20 Bradford, Yorkshire, England
Origin	Los Angeles, California, United States
Occupation(s)	Music Industry Executive
Years active	1964–present
Website	DonGrierson.com

Don Grierson is a UK-born music industry executive best known for receiving the Golden Apple Award from The Beatles and signing Celine Dion to her first US recording contract.

Don Grierson was born on August 30 in Bradford, Yorkshire, England and grew up in the small town of Dubbo, New South Wales, Australia. Grierson was born to Monica Linden, a novelist and Leslie, a department store manager. After the war years, Grierson, his parents and younger brother immigrated to Australia, where he attended a public school until he was 16 years old. After leaving school, Grierson held several local job positions that would eventually lead to his main career. He attended a small radio school in Sydney, Australia for six months. Grierson befriended the DJ of his hometown radio station and was later hired as a junior announcer and DJ there. During Grierson’s four year employment at the station, he created and held the Music Director position to emphasize the importance of music in his community.

Grierson also worked with a local band, The Saints, in his extra time, acting as manager, driver and roadie. The band's gigs mainly consisted of small events that were similar to community dances.

Originally a disc jockey at the age of 18, Grierson began his US music industry career by doing record promotions for various labels, including Capitol, Apple, Chess/Checker/Cadet and MGM records.

Once Grierson, a fanatic lover of all types of music and particularly actual record labels, moved to the United States, he found a job at a one-stop record store where he was exposed to many artists and labels that he had been distanced from. A year later, Grierson obtained his first promotion opportunity at independent record distributor, Record Merchandising, where he covered Southern California for two years. After six months in the U.S. Marine Reserves, Grierson was hired and spent four years as the West Coast Promotion Manager for Capitol Records.

As the West Coast Promotion Manager for Capitol Records, Grierson had the opportunity to work on the promotion of The Beatles in the United States. Grierson was instrumental in the promotion of all of The Beatles albums and singles from 1966 to 1969 and helped contribute to the band's success.

On October 31, 1968 Grierson received the Golden Apple Award for his outstanding promotion of the initial launch of four simultaneous four Apple Records single releases: The Beatles Hey Jude, Mary Hopkins "Those Were The Days", Jackie Lomax "Sour Milk Sea" And The Black Dyke Mills Band "Thingummybob"