After the Anschluss, he emigrated to the United States in 1938, just before the outbreak of World War II, with his brother Johnny Bienstock, who later founded Big Top Records.
[1] After visiting a cousin, Jean Aberbach, who worked as an executive with Chappell Music at New York City's Brill Building, Bienstock found employment in the stock room there.
At his Brill Building "factory", he would get prospective songs from the songwriting teams of Burt Bacharach and Hal David, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennett, as well as from Leiber and Stoller, and take them to Memphis, Tennessee, where Presley would make his choices.
[5] He acquired Chappell Music from PolyGram in 1984 — marking his elevation from storeroom clerk to become the firm's primary shareholder and president three decades later — in a deal valued at $100 million, with Bienstock owning 15% of the company.
[1] Carlin America was formed in 1994, and controlled the rights to such music as the 1956 R&B song "Fever" that became a traditional pop standard when modified by Peggy Lee, "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap" by the Australian rock group AC/DC and Meat Loaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light".
He was survived by his wife, Miriam Bienstock, who had become a partner in Atlantic Records after acquiring an ownership stake from her first husband Herb Abramson.