Don Kirshner, 76, 'Man With the Golden Ear'

LAS VEGAS - Rock promoter Don Kirshner, 76, whom Time magazine once dubbed the "Man With the Golden Ear," died Monday of heart failure at a Florida hospital, a close friend and business associate said.

Promoter Jack Wishna told the Associated Press on Tuesday that Mr. Kirshner was at a Boca Raton hospital for treatment for an infection.

"Donny Kirshner would take a kid off the street, bring him up to his office in the Brill Building, and turn him into Neil Diamond, Carole King, James Taylor, on and on," Wishna said. "I haven't spoken to anyone in the music business that Donny hasn't either discovered, promoted, or touched in some way.

"I've never seen anybody like this in my life," he said.

Mr. Kirshner's career spanned six decades of pop history. He was born in the Bronx in 1934, and scarcely 20 years later started writing jingles with future star Bobby Darin. The two got $500 for their first jingle. When Darin's career took off, Mr. Kirshner (with Al Nevins) helped create the publishing company Aldon, which would represent many of the pop hits of the next 30 years.

In those early days, many of the most successful writers of the "Brill Building Era" of pop - named after the building at 1619 Broadway in which many songwriters had offices - were published and fronted by Mr. Kirshner, including Neil Sedaka, Carole King, Barry Mann, and Cynthia Weil. "Up on the Roof," "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do," "Will You Love Me Tomorrow," and "You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' " - these are just a handful of the smash hits produced under Mr. Kirshner's tutelage.

The Brill Building was a hit factory - notable for attracting songwriters, agents, and others as tenants. More than 160 of its tenants were in the music industry by the early 1960s, according to New York's Landmarks Preservation Commission.

Mr. Kirshner's fame and power as an impresario, producer, and promoter grew. When the bubblegum fad came along, he helped midwife many of the tunes for bands such as the Monkees and the Archies. He helped assemble the Monkees, a TV commodity for CBS as well as a pop band, and he roped together songwriters such as Diamond and King to churn out memorable tunes within CBS television's breakneck production schedule. After two No. 1 albums, he and the band split over artistic differences.

After being executive producer of ABC's seminal In Concert show in 1972-3, Mr. Kirshner created Don Kirshner's Rock Concert, a syndicated show that ran from 1973 (with a performance by the Rolling Stones) to 1981. It specialized in showing acts performing live, rather than what was then the industry standard - lip-synching. The show gave national exposure to musicians including Billy Joel and the Police. Mr. Kirshner showed an unusually broad taste in artists, from Ike and Tina Turner and B.B. King to Steely Dan to the Mahavishnu Orchestra and Return to Forever. Rock Concert also boosted the careers of comics including Billy Crystal, Arsenio Hall, and David Letterman.

The show also featured artists Mr. Kirshner helped launch, including Prince, the Eagles, Lionel Richie, and Ozzy Osbourne. Its archives are now treasured for its video record of a generation of pop artists. Mr. Kirshner's flat delivery as the emcee of the show led to a celebrated Paul Shaffer parody on Saturday Night Live.

Wishna said Mr. Kirshner was a mentor who knew the art of discovering talent and cared about the artists he worked with.

"He was a father to these people even though some of them were three or four years younger than him," Wishna said.

Wishna said Mr. Kirshner was a pioneer who developed a system for singer-songwriters to share in the profits of selling music.

He also ran three labels, Dimension Records, Colgems Records, and Kirshner Records.

Before he died, Mr. Kirshner was chief creative officer of Rockrena, a company launching this year to find and promote talent online.