Ethel Gabriel

Ethel deNagy Gabriel (born November 16, 1921) is an American record producer with a four-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.

At RCA she initiated the company's Nashville studios and was a leader 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.

Gabriel served as the A&R representative for singers such as 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 other artists, achieving top record sales for several of these artists.

In 1959 Gabriel created the "The Living Strings" series of albums, which were easy listening instrumental string versions of popular tunes, earning a Grammy Award in 1968. They spawned other "Living" ventures, such as the Living Jazz. She was also involved with the sound and direction of George Melachrino's "Music for Moods" movement that yielded the titles Music for Dining, Music for Daydreaming, Music for Faith and Inner Calm, and Music to Stop Smoking By. Gabriel was involved in 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.

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