Florence Greenberg, 82, Pop-Record Producer November 4, 1995 By Robert McG. Thomas, Jr., The New York Times Florence Greenberg, a one-time New Jersey housewife who parlayed an unlikely hit record by a teen-age group known as the Shirelles into an improbable career as the proprietor of a leading independent label of the 1960's, died on Thursday at the Hackensack University Medical Center. She was 82, and lived in Teaneck, N.J. As a pioneering woman in the male-dominated world of rhythm-and-blues, Mrs. Greenberg was, by her own later account, a triple anomaly: "a white woman who was in a black business and who couldn't carry a tune." Maybe so, but she had a finely tuned ear for popular music, a keen eye for talent and a driving ambition, all of which became increasingly apparent in the 1960's. In addition to a series of hits by the Shirelles, among them "Dedicated to the One I Love," "Tonight's the Night," and Mrs. Greenberg's own composition, "Soldier Boy," her Scepter label produced such 1960's standards as "Louie, Louie," by the Kingsmen; "Twist and Shout," by the Isley Brothers, and "Walk on By," by Dionne Warwick, not to mention "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head," the Burt Bacharach-Hal David song, sung by B. J. Thomas on the soundtrack of "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid," which won an Academy Award in 1969. Mrs. Greenberg traced her success to a day in 1957 when her 16-year-old daughter, Mary Jane, came home raving about the performance of four classmates at a Passaic High School assembly. Their names were Shirley Alston, Addie Harris, Doris Kenner and Beverly Lee, but they called themselves the Shirelles, and as soon as Mrs. Greenberg persuaded them to sing for her, she knew that their song, "I Met Him on a Sunday," had the makings of a hit. A former Republican campaign worker who had translated her political skills into a job peddling songs for a local songwriters, Mrs. Greenberg, who had been married to an accountant, had already become a familiar figure on Tin Pan Alley, hobnobbing with music-industry hopefuls at the old Turf restaurant on Broadway at 51st Street. She had also joined with two partners to form a label, Tiara Records. The Tiara release of "I Met Him on a Sunday" was such an immediate success. Within months, Mrs. Greenberg climbed so many radio-station stairs, sold so many records from the trunk of her car and created such demand that her company could not handle the orders. So she sold the Shirelles' contract to Decca, an industry giant. That might have been the end of her career, but, Decca, convinced that the Shirelles would be a one-hit phenomenon, returned the group to Mrs. Greenberg, who formed Scepter to replace Tiara. Over the next decade, Scepter became an industry sensation as Mrs. Greenberg, whose company eventually occupied an entire floor of 1650 Broadway, repeatedly demonstrated her sure sense of talent. This was never more evident than the day in 1962 when Mr. Bacharach played a demonstration record of one of his songs for Mrs. Greenberg, and she told him that while she did not like the song she loved the singer. The next day, Mr. Bacharach returned, saying he had a signed contract with the singer, a young woman named Dionne Warwick. Partly because of the long line of hit Warwick releases that followed, Gulf & Western offered $6 million for Scepter in 1965, but Mrs. Greenberg declined to sell. It was, she later said, a major mistake. Within a decade, as major labels came to dominate the distribution network, Scepter's success had faded, and by the time the company folded in 1977 Mrs. Greenberg had lost everything. In recent years, Mrs. Greenberg had been cheered by Bette Midler's plans to make a movie of her life, but because Ms. Midler has been unable to secure the required rights from two of the three surviving Shirelles (Ms. Harris died in 1982), the project is dormant. She is survived by her daughter, Mary Jane Goff of Upper Saddle River, N.J.; a son, Stanley, of Los Angeles; six grandchildren, and five great-grandchildren. Return to PHS'60 News