Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago

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Clive Davis Expensive Casket Carried By Celebrities 💔

A large collection of superstars, powerful music executives and other friends and family came together for Clive Davis’ funeral in New York on Monday morning, remembering Davis in emotional tributes as a music obsessive and champion of artists who architected the modern record business.

Many of the biggest artists most synonymous with Clive Davis’ career — Dionne Warwick, Bruce Springsteen, Barry Manilow, Jennifer Hudson, Kenny G and Alicia Keys — all honored the mogul a week after he died at the age of 94. Kenny G opened the funeral, which took place at Central Synagogue in Midtown Manhattan, playing a clarinet solo, while during the middle of the service, Hudson sang covers of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You.” The rest of the musicians gave emotional eulogies.

Dionne Warwick, who was the first speaker after Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” recalling Clive Davis’ family saying it was a song he wished he produced. Warwick recalled how Clive Davis had pursued her while she was between record deals, while she was considering leaving the record industry altogether.

You may be willing to give the business up, but the business isn’t willing to give you up,” she remembered Clive Davis saying. She then made an acronym out of Clive Davis’ full name, saying “Clive” itself stood for “Completely loyal, incredibly valuable and everlasting.”

“He was always asking, ‘Where’s my Dionne?’ Well, I’m here today, Clive, for you,” she said. “I’ll always be here for you.”

As Manilow opened during his speech: “A few months ago, surgeons removed a piece of my lung. Last week, I lost a piece of my heart.”

Manilow remembered the early days working with Clive Davis, recalling how the mogul implored him to cover the song “Brandy,” and how he didn’t think it was a fit for him. He showed Clive Davis the recording, which they both agreed was “terrible.” Manilow showed Clive Davis some softer takes he did of the song, and Clive Davis told him to “just do that,” which gave way to “Mandy,” Manilow’s first No. 1 hit.

“He would show me a song; I would turn it down; we would argue; I would rearrange it; I would record it,” Manilow said of their dynamic. “This went on for nearly 50 years. He believed in me from the very beginning.”

Clive Davis was Manilow’s guide to the end, as the singer recalled the mogul pushing him on an album idea as recently as three weeks ago, calling him “twice, three times a day” about the concept.

“I’m going to miss him. Who am I going to argue with?” Manilow joked. “Oh, Clive, I wish we could do it all again. Thanks for everything, my friend.”

Keys followed Hudson’s performance, taking the stage in tears, her back facing the crowd as she spent a few moments collecting herself before reading a letter she addressed to “to the man who believed first.”

“You saw the music that was still sleeping inside me, waiting for someone with the wisdom and the courage to call it forward,” Keys said. “In a world that so often reduces art to commerce and genius to product, you held the line. You reminded me again and again that what we were doing was about truth and legacy and about the human heart reaching out to another human heart and saying you’re not alone.”

Davis’ sons, Fred and Doug Davis, gave their own eulogies as well, with Fred Davis remembering the earliest days of his father’s ascent as he ran CBS Records, sitting in his father’s office on the yellow carpeting as his father had him read the lyrics to “Blinded by the Light.” He recalled his father’s firing from Columbia and determination to start Arista, then decades later “the tenacity of a 67-year-old man who refused to go down, refused to retire,” as he started J Records instead.

“But most importantly,” Fred Davis said, “from my perspective, his love of being a dad. He was the best. And notwithstanding any of the incredible accomplishments, that is what I will remember him for the most.”

Doug Davis, 12 years younger than Fred Davis, recalled that Clive Davis wasn’t around as often during his childhood, with the executive often out late at concerts, artists’ showcases and traveling the world. He recalled growing closer with his father in adulthood, working with him in the industry and helping him plan his legendary pre-Grammy parties. He said Clive Davis spent his final days with his family, saying that “we were with him, loving him, laughing with him.”

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