The electric, eclectic Turk

In 1936, Turkish nationals were directed to choose surnames, one of Atatürk's ideas. Munir, who had been an aide to Atatürk, selected the name "Ertegun," which translates roughly as "living hopefully."

When Munir Ertegun, then the Turkish ambassador to the US, died in 1944, his sons Nesuhi and Ahmet, then in their twenties (Nesuhi was about six years older) opted to remain in the States; Nesuhi and his wife stayed on the West Coast, while Ahmet went to graduate school and sold records at retail on the side.

Eventually the younger Ertegun wanted to get into the business for himself, and after a false start, he, dental student Herb Abramson, and dentist Dr Vahdi Sabit incorporated as Atlantic Records in the fall of 1947. With a strike by the musicians' union looming, the nascent label recorded dozens of sides, though nothing clicked until Stick McGhee's remake of his "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee" in the spring of 1949.

Independent labels were perpetually improvident, and Atlantic was no exception. For Big Joe Turner's 1954 recording of Jesse Stone's immortal "Shake, Rattle and Roll," there were no background singers hired; Stone, Ertegun, and newly-installed producer (and partner) Jerry Wexler sang the parts themselves.

Still, the label kept rolling on, and in 1956 Ahmet's brother Nesuhi was brought into the fold; it was Nesuhi who scouted for talent out west, and who built up Atlantic's jazz department. The next year, the Erteguns and Wexler bought out Abramson, his ex-wife Miriam, who had been the label's vice-president, and Dr Sabit. All these things cost money, and by 1958 Atlantic and its sister label Atco (née "Atlas") were just about out of it. What saved them, according to Jerry Wexler, was a pair of simultaneous hits: the Coasters' "Yakety Yak" and Bobby Darin's "Splish Splash," two records with consecutive catalog numbers and titles that sounded onomatopoeic and nothing else in common.

Then in 1967, Seven Arts, which had just acquired Warner Bros., bought out Atlantic. Sensibly, the new owners opted to leave Ertegun and Wexler alone; two years later, Kinney National, later renamed Warner Communications, bought both labels and followed with a third: Elektra. It would be more than a decade before the corporate suits started messing with the individual labels, but by then Ertegun had a bigger idea: the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which he founded in 1986 — and into which he was himself inducted as a "non-performer" the following year.

In October of 2006, Ahmet Ertegun took a spill at a Rolling Stones concert; while it looked like he would recover, he took a turn for the worse, slipped into a coma, and today he died.

I have no idea how many records I have that Ahmet Ertegun recorded, wrote, supervised, inspired, or had anything else to do with, but there's no doubt in my mind that he was one of the first great record men.

And, as it would turn out, one of the last.

Posted at 8:30 PM to Tongue and Groove


TrackBack: 11:33 PM, 14 December 2006
» Ahmet Ertegun, RIP from The Anger of Compassion
Just read that Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records and of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has died. I first encountered his name when I read the Phil Spector part of a paperback bearing the title The......[read more]