Morris got his start in the “rekkid business” in the early 1960s, in the tiny, cigar-stained offices of those Brill Building–era music factories near Times Square. His delivery of retro syllabic stresses (Broadway is Broad way) and dropped Rs is classic “New Yawk” U2’s Bono is said to do a spot-on imitation. Dre, Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mariah Carey, Jay-Z, Beyoncé, Adele, Lady Gaga, Kanye West, Taylor Swift, and many more, including his favorite act, the Rolling Stones, which Morris pronounces with an emphasis on the first word. As the only person to run each of the “Big Three” record companies - Warner, Universal, and Sony - Morris has presided over rosters of artists whose gazillion-selling records are the soundtrack of modern life: U2, Stevie Nicks, Led Zeppelin, Phil Collins, Foreigner, Dr. Morris, seventy-nine, compact, barrel-chested, dressed in an impeccably tailored dark suit and striped tie, his brow grooved like a musical staff, his head hedged with combed-back white, is the jukebox hero you never heard of. “I’m interested in doing a good job, and that’s about it. You get past that quick,” says Doug Morris ’60CC, seated ankle-over-knee on the taupe-and-cream sofa in his office on lower Madison Avenue. “I know who I am, I know what I do, and I’m not interested in showing off.
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