Gwendolyn Quinn knows a little something about Queens. The power publicist counts as clients Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin and Queen of Funk, Chaka Khan; credits Queen of Disco, Gloria Gaynor for her first job in entertainment, and considers hip-hop’s Queen Latifah among her many PR successes.
Her first music industry job was on the television and radio staff at ASCAP, a true education in the business of music. She soon found herself taking a personal assistant position to another notable black woman, model Beverly Johnson. Working with Beverly provided an early glimpse at the machinations of publicity and an introduction to the eighties art and fashion crowd. “Andy Warhol, Keith Haring — in fact, Beverly gave me a couple of his pieces–photographer Francisco Scavullo and the designers Fernando Sanchez, Halston and Calvin Klein.”
After a few years at ABC/Capital Cities exploring her interest in television development and production, Gwendolyn circled back around to music. Her first position in Public Relations was Publicity Coordinator for Mercury/PolyGram with an eclectic roster of artists including Vanessa Williams, Tony! Toni! Tone!, Jon Lucien and Third World. “Jackie Rhinehart hired me for that job and she had to fire me. Girl, we were roommates at the time!” Feeling untouchable in the embrace of Jackie (National Director of Artist Development) and then-label president Ed Eckstine, (son of Billy) Gwendolyn had gotten a little too big for her britches, in need of the attitude adjustment she got. “I can laugh now but it wasn’t funny at the time,” she says.
She persevered and landed at Queen Latifah’s Flavor Unit Entertainment where she became National Director of Publicity, formulating campaigns for such artists as Naughty by Nature, Zhané and of course, Queen Latifah. She would eventually exclusively handle all publicity for Latifah’s music, television, film and corporate affairs.
In 1995 she became National Director of Publicity and Media Relations at Capitol Records working with some amazing singers: Rachelle Ferrell, The Whispers and BeBe and CeCe Winans. When Capitol Records dismantled their Urban Department (“we called it Black Friday”) leaving Gwendolyn without a job, CeCe was a saving grace. “I was supposed to have gone to the Grammy Awards, because CeCe was up for a big award and she was singing with Whitney and Shirley Caesar. When she won that Grammy, she thanked me onstage, Gwendolyn Quinn, full name. My phone lit up like a switchboard and trust me I didn’t know what I was gonna do, but that was a Wednesday night and I had a job by Friday. Jackie (Rhinehart) called me ‘Girl, I’m in the lobby with Hiriam (Hicks of Chris Blackwell’s Island Records) he wants to hire you.’ She was calling me because that’s how powerful that was. CeCe Winans can get ANYTHING from me. She’s a sweetheart.” Gwendolyn was with Island and the likes of the legendary Isley Brothers for a year before Arista came knocking.
In 1997, she joined the house that Clive Davis built as Senior Director of Publicity working the powerhouse roster including among others Aretha Franklin, Whitney Houston, Monica, Deborah Cox, Prince and Lisa Stansfield. She handled select media and press activities for LA Reid and Babyface Edmonds’ LaFace/Arista imprint and created and launched media campaigns for BadBoy Entertainment/Arista artists Puff Daddy, Notorious B.I.G., Faith Evans and Mase.
“Shortly after Big died, Puffy was very sensitive, still grieving. We got an offer to do a Fox News interview. Mind you this was before we really knew who Bill O’Reilly was, and I said we shouldn’t do it. It was too soon. It’s not ET or Access Hollywood, it’s hard news, if you don’t want to answer any questions, don’t put yourself in the position to be asked.” Benny Medina, his manager at the time, thought differently and approved the interview. “MTV was following Puffy around doing A Day With Puffy Combs. It was going pretty smoothly. End-of-day, we went to Fox. We’d put in writing that talk of Big was off-limits, but Bill brought it up anyway. Puffy got up and left the live interview. Benny wasn’t there for the fallout, I was. I was walking behind Puffy and MTV was walking behind me and he was ranting and raving and carrying on. It was an All in the Family moment. He’s screaming like Archie and I’m trying to calm him down like Puffy, Puffy (in Edith Bunker’s voice.) The cameras were rolling and MTV was loving it. I was mortified, young publicist looking crazy. I called the producer in tears and said ‘you can’t run that.’ But of course they wanted to run it, it was the most eventful part of the day. It was good drama for TV.”
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