Word: goddard
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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MUSICIANS make the best businessmen. I'd much rather be represented in a business deal by Stravinsky than any lawyer you could name." So says Goddard Lieberson, 47, the handsome, debonair president of Columbia Records. Lieberson ought to know. He is a musician (piano), composer (more than 100 pieces), novelist (Three for Bedroom C) and top-notch businessman. He has made Columbia the biggest seller of long-playing record albums (which now account for more than 70% of all records sold) and doubled its sales (now more than $50 million) since he took over as president...
...chief divisions. He hired Mitch Miller to run the popular-record division "despite the whoopdedoo because he was an oboe player and wore a beard." He gets along famously with artists ("I like creative people"), has lured many of them to Columbia, partly because, as Richard Rodgers says, "Goddard and his people make you feel a little more appreciated." Lieberson has a good ear for trends-though he can sometimes prove hard of hearing. He thought rock 'n' roll was an undesirable and fleeting fad, refused to record the tunes till Columbia had lost millions of sales...
Married in 1946 to Dancer Vera Zorina (his second), Lieberson likes to be a friend of the famous, is an untiring name-dropper. He was delighted when Rosemary Clooney substituted his name for Franklin Roosevelt's in her recording of How About You?, came up with: "And Goddard Lieberson's looks give me a thrill." Now Lieberson is guiding Columbia into stereophonic sound, this year is planning 200 stereo albums. He is convinced that stereo is a logical refinement of LP rather than another technological revolution, that what is put on records is still more important than...
...Goddard's rockets remained small, but they were not crude. They had all the essential features that later rockets needed to fly out of the atmosphere, including gyroscopic guidance and combustion-chamber walls cooled by flowing fuel. The German V-25 that caused a sensation toward the end of the war followed Goddard's lead without basic innovations...
Soon after the publication of Goddard's 1919 report, rocket enthusiasts began to clot together in little societies. The science of celestial mechanics (motions of the planets) had been highly developed by the astronomers. The astronauts took it over, added some features of their own. Long before World War II, when no rocket had flown above buzzard altitude, they drew charts of imaginary voyages to Mars or Venus that match almost exactly those drawn today...