He was responsible, with his younger brother Jean Aberbach, for establishing the Hill and Range music publishing house, and was instrumental in the careers of many leading country and popular music performers of the mid and late twentieth century, including Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Ray Charles, Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel.
Julian joined him in Paris in 1932, and soon established his own publishing business, which concentrated on securing royalties for movie screenwriters.
After the brothers sold the business in 1936, Jean began working in the US as an agent for French music publisher Francis Salabert, while Julian remained in Paris.
He was drafted in 1941, and after working with Free French troops in Fort Benning, Georgia, became an instructor at a military intelligence school in Maryland, from where he was discharged in 1944.
He developed contacts in the music industry in Nashville, and organised the songwriting agreements for such stars as Red Foley, Ernest Tubb, Eddy Arnold, Hank Snow, and, later, Johnny Cash.
[2] By the early 1970s, after Hill and Range had become the biggest independent music publishing business in the world, Aberbach and his family moved their main residence to Paris.
[3] He effectively retired from the music business in the early 1970s, but expanded his collection of paintings and sculpture, and later opened the Aberbach Gallery in New York.