“Few people have had a bigger impact on the record industry than Ahmet, and no one loved American music more than he did.”
– David Geffen
Ahmet Ertegün ( July 31, 1923 – December 14, 2006) was a Turkish American musician and businessman, best known as the founder (with Herb Abramson) and president of Atlantic Records, and for discovering or championing artists like Eric Clapton, Phil Collins, Genesis, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Dusty Springfield, Yes, and more.
“When I was about 8 or 9 years old, in 1932, Nesuhi (his brother) took me to hear Cab Calloway and later Duke Ellington at the Palladium in London. I had never really seen black people except I had seen pictures of great artists like Josephine Baker—whom I spent a few days with before she died. And I had never heard anything as glorious as those beautiful musicians, wearing great white tails playing these incredibly gleaming horns with drums and rhythm sections unlike you ever heard on records. In those days, they recorded the drums and the bass very, very softly so it wouldn’t break the grooves of the 78 rpm records. So I became a jazz fan quite early and never went off the path thereafter.”
– Ahmet Ertegun
He also wrote classic blues and pop songs and served as Chairman of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and museum. Ertegun has been described as “one of the most significant figures in the modern recording industry.”
When not pursuing the aristocracy of British rock’n’roll – for instance making the fabled Dusty In Memphis album with Dusty Springfield – Atlantic became an influential player in homegrown American rock, picking up LA-based Buffalo Springfield, which then starred Stephen Stills and Neil Young. The Allman Brothers, Foreigner, Stevie Nicks, Roberta Flack, Jewel, Sean Paul and Matchbox 20 all joined Atlantic. The company remained a magnet for talent, because of its track record and Ertegun’s in-house production team of Jerry Wexler, Arif Mardin and Tom Dowd. Atlantic also enjoyed a reputation for not systematically fleecing its artists in notorious Tin Pan Alley fashion.
(The Guardian)
The story of Atlantic Records is the story of Ahmet Ertegun. Here is a good documentary telling his story:
