During Joe Galante’s esteemed 50 years in Nashville’s music business, his influence and expertise have had a lasting impact. He led record labels including RCA, BMG/Nashville, Sony BMG and Sony Nashville and worked with a talented roster of artists, such as Alabama, Clint Black, Brooks & Dunn, Jimmy Buffet, Kenny Chesney, Sara Evans, Vince Gill, Alan Jackson, Waylon Jennings, The Judds, Miranda Lambert, Martina McBride, Ronnie Milsap, Lorrie Morgan, K.T. Oslin, Brad Paisley, Dolly Parton, Sylvia, Carrie Underwood, Keith Whitley, Gretchen Wilson and Chris Young. He started his career in New York as a budget analyst with RCA Records before moving to Nashville, where he was mentored by RCA giants Jerry Bradley and Chet Atkins and took the helm at RCA Nashville at age 32, the youngest person to ever lead a major label’s Nashville division. Under his leadership, RCA became Country’s top label in 1982 and held that spot for 11 years. Among his many achievements, he helped steer RCA’s late-1970s and early 1980s crossover successes with such artists as Waylon Jennings, Ronnie Milsap, Sylvia and Dolly Parton. He shepherded the multi-Platinum ascendance of Alabama using a pop marketing model. During a tenure in New York as President of RCA Record Label, he signed the Dave Matthews Band, SWV and Wu-Tang Clan. Under his leadership in 2004, BMG/Nashville became the first label group of the SoundScan era to place three Country albums — Jimmy Buffett’s License to Chill (RCA/Mailboat), Kenny Chesney’s When the Sun Goes Down (BNA Records) and Alan Jackson’s What I Do (Arista Nashville) atop the Billboard 200 chart in a calendar year. He has been a member of the Country Music Association Board of Directors since 1978 and the CMA Foundation Board of Directors since 2011, serving as chairman of both organizations. He was a founding member of Leadership Music, now in its 33rd year. He received the Bob Kingsley Living Legend Award from the Opry Trust Fund in 2015. In 2021, CMA honored him with the J. William Denny Award, to honor a lifetime of dedication to the CMA Board of Directors. Since leaving Sony Music Nashville in 2010, Galante has served as a mentor-in-residence for Nashville Entrepreneur Center where he founded Project Music, and as a consultant to BMG Music and Morris Higham Management. He has chaired the Music City Music Council, a group of leaders dedicated to further establish Nashville’s position as the global music capital. He established the Phran Galante Memorial Fund for Lung Cancer Research at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, to honor his late wife who passed in September 2019. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in October 2022.
countrymusichalloffame.org/hall-of-fame/joe-galante
