Charles Koppelman, Force in the Music Industry and Beyond, Dies at 82

In the 1980s, Mr. Koppelman and two associates, the financier Stephen Swid and the music executive Martin Bandier, carried out one of that period’s most lucrative music transactions. In 1986, they purchased CBS’s publishing unit — which controlled the copyrights to about 250,000 songs, including evergreens like “Over the Rainbow” and “New York, New York” — for $125 million. Barely two years later, in early 1989, they sold it to Thorn-EMI, the corporate parent of the British label EMI, for $337 million, the richest price ever paid in music publishing to that point.

In the years following that deal, as EMI’s top recorded-music executive in the United States, Mr. Koppelman oversaw hugely successful records like the 1990 debut album by Wilson Phillips, the pop trio made up of daughters of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and John and Michelle Phillips of the Mamas the Papas.

“He’s like King Midas,” Carnie Wilson of Wilson Phillips said of Mr. Koppelman to New York magazine in 1992. “Everything he touches turns to gold.”

Charles Arthur Koppelman was born on March 30, 1940, in Brooklyn, and grew up in Laurelton, Queens. His father, Irving Koppelman, worked at a printing press, and his mother, Ruth (Lerman) Koppelman, was an assistant to the principal of Far Rockaway High School, which Charles attended.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/29/arts/music/charles-koppelman-dead.html