Laurie Goldstein, General Manager, a native New Yorker, always enjoyed all the rich cultural benefits of the city. While still in college, a summer job at a record label altered her career direction from literature to music. After graduation, early jobs included a couple of record labels and a publishing company. At the request of a friend, she agreed to work temporarily for John Levy Enterprises. At that time, John Levy and his partners Julian and Nat Adderley had 4 companies including artist management (John Levy Enterprises), music publishing (Gopam Enterprises, Inc.), the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, Inc., and a record production company, Junat Productions. John’s artist roster in addition to Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, included Roberta Flack, Herbie Hancock, Donny Hathaway, Freddie Hubbard, Abbey Lincoln, Letta Mbulu, Les McCann, Wes Montgomery, Stanley Turrentine, Sarah Vaughan, Johnny “Guitar” Watson, Joe Williams and of course Nancy Wilson.
Subsequently, she was asked to remain on a full time basis. Laurie’s work week was divided among the 4 companies. The publishing catalogs consisted mainly of compositions by the above artists but also included valued catalogs of Joe Zawinul, Caiphus Semenya, Nat Adderley, Jr., Earl & Wilson Turbinton as well as tunes by many of the musicians with the above groups and other friends.
Laurie also worked directly with the Adderleys as well as the other John Levy artists in arranging all their varied travel schedules and other aspects of their careers as needed. The office constantly bustled from record sessions, films, tv appearances, Cannonball Adderley’s tv show, John Levy’s concert productions and the excitement of chart topping tunes. A few years later, Laurie was asked to take over the publishing administration and, at Julian’s urging, relocated to the Los Angeles office and the fast pace continued there. Julian’s sudden death, a year after the move, put a brake on much of this activity. Julian had been such a force and the loss to all, especially to his brother Nat, was overwhelming. Although work continued, some projects were dropped and eventually John decided to close the office, however Laurie continued administrating the publishing catalogs.
After five years in Los Angeles, Laurie returned to New York and continued to run the publishing companies on a freelance basis while also accepting a job offer to become Executive Director of NY Chapter of NARAS (Grammy Awards). When the Grammys were in NY work revolved around all the events and parties leading up to the show. But as a non-profit organization, annually, the office was responsible for educational programs in schools and the community, seminars for members, luncheons honoring record producers, MVP Awards recognizing the contribution of background singers and sidemen, and special events that highlighted extraordinary individuals in the music community such as Les Paul, Toots Thielemans, Milt Hinton, Zubin Mehta, Eugene Ormandy and others.
After a number of years, Laurie decided to devote full time to the administration of music publishing for the existing catalogs (Adderleys, Wes Montgomery, Gerry Mulligan, Letta Mbulu & Caiphus Semenya, Freddie Hubbard, Turbintons, Buddy Williams, Joe Williams, Joe Zawinul) and added catalogs for Carl Allen, Skip Anderson, Donald Brown, Adela Dalto, Vincent Herring, Javon Jackson, and others.