Just Say Yes. None other than Bugs Bunny himself was featured on the cover of Sire Records' 1987 promotional release, the first in a series of collections spotlighting the label's wealth of musical riches.  Long before Warner Bros. said "yes" to Sire, though, the company was a scrappy independent thanks to the vision of its co-founder, Seymour Stein.  The music mogul who spearheaded the careers of Madonna, Ramones, Talking Heads, The Pretenders, and countless others died yesterday at the age of 80 after a battle with cancer.  Yet his all-encompassing musical legacy lives on.

The Brooklyn native born Seymour Steinbigle got his first taste of the music business as a high school student.  He hadn't yet graduated when he began working part-time after school for Billboard and interning summers in the offices of Cincinnati's King Records, a label specializing in country and R&B.  King founder Syd Nathan took the ambitious young man under his wing.  King launched the career of James Brown, and Stein was on hand to watch his ascent.  Following his internship, Stein returned to Billboard (during which time he and Pop Chart Editor Tom Noonan introduced the Hot 100 chart) and then returned to King for a two-year stint.  Missing the hustle and bustle of his native New York, Stein briefly found employment as the assistant to George Goldner, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller's partner in Red Bird Records.

Armed with the valuable lessons learned from Syd Nathan and George Goldner, two very different music impresarios, Stein was ready to strike out on his own.  With his friend, songwriter-producer Richard Gottehrer (The McCoys, The Strangeloves), he founded Sire Productions - the S and E from Seymour, the I and R from Richard.  At Sire, Stein would bring his deep knowledge and passion for music in all its many genres to the fore.  Early on, Sire championed progressive British bands that the major labels hadn't yet noticed.  Initially, Sire Records' U.S. distribution was handled by London Records; later, the label was associated with Polydor, the Paramount-affiliated Famous Music, and its successor ABC Records.  In those early days, Sire scored hits with the likes of Dutch progressive band Focus and U.K. groups Barclay James Harvest, Renaissance, and the Climax Blues Band.  Sire also became partners in the U.K.'s Blue Horizon Records, introducing the world to such artists as Fleetwood Mac and Chicken Shack (featuring the future Christine McVie, then Christine Perfect.)

In 1976, Sire began its long association with Warner Bros. Records, which continues to this day.  Not long after, the label was fully absorbed into the conglomerate while retaining its artistic independence.  Stein remained on board while Gottehrer departed - but not before co-producing Richard Hell and The Voidoids' LP Blank Generation (released in 1977).  That seminal punk record would be one of many leading Sire to a close identification with the punk ethos.  Sire was home of quintessential Queens band Ramones from their 1976 inception to the close of the following decade.  It was Stein's then-wife Linda who had first heard them play at CBGB; while her husband was somewhat bemused by Ramones' aggressively, intentionally "dumb" approach, he signed them nonetheless.  A student of pop history who always had his finger on the pulse, he moved into new wave with Robin Scott's synthpop project M (scoring Sire its first No. 1 with, appropriately enough, "Pop Muzik"), Talking Heads, Soft Cell, and Pretenders.

Stein was hospitalized in 1982 when he made arguably the label's most crucial decision - the signing of singer-dancer Madonna Ciccone.  He met with her from his bed at Lenox Hill Hospital, initially inking a deal for three singles with an option for a full album.  Needless to say, he exercised the option.  Madonna remained on Sire for a decade and today is ranked by the RIAA as the best-selling female rock artist of the 20th century and the third highest-certified female artist of all time, after only Mariah Carey and Barbra Streisand.

At Sire, Stein brought his personal touch to the artists with whom he chose to work including veterans such as Brian Wilson, Lou Reed, and Little Jimmy Scott.  He remained with the label he founded until the mid-1990s when he left to become head of Sire's sister label Elektra Records.  Stein served in various positions at Warner Music until his well-deserved retirement in 2018.  In the same year, he released his autobiography, Siren Song: My Life in Music.

Looking back on his illustrious career for the 2005 Rhino box set entitled Just Say Sire, Stein wrote, "I am reminded of the first paycheck I ever received from Billboard: taking it home on the subway to Brooklyn and showing it to my mother and father and saying, 'Can you believe it? They pay me for this!' I still can't believe it."  That sense of wonder never left Seymour Stein.  We're all the richer for it.