"It's been a sad week filled with reports of too many unheralded greats leaving us -- starting with Don DeVito, veteran A&R executive for Columbia Records, who died of prostate cancer the day after Thanksgiving.
At CBS and then Columbia throughout the '70s DeVito worked with virtually all of the label's major talents, principally Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel and Aerosmith. He was instrumental in bringing Dylan back to the label after his short foray for David Geffen's Asylum Records (chiefly for 1974's Planet Waves), and would go on to produce two of the master's cultishly prized albums, 1976's commercial success Desire and its less-loved 1978 follow-up, Street-Legal.
He would later share in the 1989 Grammy for best traditional folk recording (for Folkways -- A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie & Leadbelly) and play a role in organizing The Concert for New York City shortly after 9/11. DeVito was 72.
Then on Saturday, underrated but influential soul man Howard Tate also died at 72, from complications in part brought on by leukemia."
At CBS and then Columbia throughout the '70s DeVito worked with virtually all of the label's major talents, principally Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel and Aerosmith. He was instrumental in bringing Dylan back to the label after his short foray for David Geffen's Asylum Records (chiefly for 1974's Planet Waves), and would go on to produce two of the master's cultishly prized albums, 1976's commercial success Desire and its less-loved 1978 follow-up, Street-Legal.
He would later share in the 1989 Grammy for best traditional folk recording (for Folkways -- A Vision Shared: A Tribute to Woody Guthrie & Leadbelly) and play a role in organizing The Concert for New York City shortly after 9/11. DeVito was 72.
Then on Saturday, underrated but influential soul man Howard Tate also died at 72, from complications in part brought on by leukemia."
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