The Story of Atlantic Records: Ahmet Ertegun in His Own Words

AS A SONGWRITER, PRODUCER AND CO-FOUNDER of Atlantic Records, Ahmet Ertegun has participated in the whole of postwar popular music: jazz, blues, R&B, rock, heavy metal, disco and hip-hop. He was present at the birth of rock & roll in the late 1940s and 1950s, writing and producing seminal hits by early Atlantic stars Ray Charles, Ruth Brown, the Clovers and Big Joe Turner. Ertegun was also a vital figure in the evolution of soul – nurturing the careers of Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding and Solomon Burke – and he presided over Atlantic’s explosive success in the 1960s and 1970s with Cream, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. At seventy-seven, Ertegun is still producing records for the company he started with Herb Abramson in 1947.

“WHAT’D I SAY: The Atlantic Story” (Welcome Rain Publishers) recounts the history of the company from its modest birth to its continuing success in a new century. The book is lavishly illustrated with photographs chronicling the label’s life span. But the story of Atlantic is in large part the story of Ertegun’s own long days and nights in the studio, on the road and on the town with the artists he signed, produced and loved, Born on July 31st, 1923, in Istanbul, Ertegun, the son of a Turkish diplomat, is a rarity among record executives, a cultured man with a keen ear and warm manner who has established long personal friendships with many of his acts; and the tales born of those relationships form the heart of What’d I Say. Also featured in the book are the voices of Ertegun’s closest associates at Atlantic – among them, his late brother, Nesuhi, producer Jerry Wexler and engineer Tom Dowd – as well as Atlantic artists such as Keith Richards and Scott Weiland of Stone Temple Pilots.

But “WHAT’D I SAY” is told mostly in the words of the man Otis Redding fondly called “Omelet” because, as Ertegun recalls in the book, “he thought at first this actually was my name.” – DAVID FRICKE

1947-1952: DISCOVERING BLIND WILLIE MCTELL, RAY CHARLES AND PROFESSOR LONGHAIR

ATLANTIC’S FIRST HEADQUARTERS were in a broken-down hotel on Fifty-Sixth Street, between Sixth and Broadway, called the Jefferson, which was condemned as unsafe soon after we moved in. I had rented a tiny suite on the ground floor, slept in the bedroom, and the living room was the Atlantic office.

That first setup was incredible. People like Rudy Toombs and Doc Pomus used to come by and audition their songs. We would go in, set up, work with the various engineers, and in this way between the 21st of November and 29th of December [in 1947] we recorded 65 tracks. Our first releases, in 1948, were four singles by Tiny Grimes, Eddie Safranski, Joe Morris and Melrose Colbert.

I had collected records by Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Willie McTell – a lot of the early blind blues singers. I was walking along a main street in the black section of Atlanta – to me this is the most incredible story of my whole career – and there was a blind man who was sitting on the corner of the street with his back to the side of the building singing gospel songs, with a hat in front of him for people to drop money into. I stopped to listen to him because he was playing incredible slide guitar and singing so beautifully. I handed him some money so that the fellow could tell it was bills, not coins, and he said, “Oh, thank you – thanks.” So I said, “Have you ever heard of Blind Willie McTell?” And he said, “Man, I am Blind Willie McTell.” I said, “I can’t believe it. You are?” He said, “Yeah, that’s who I am.” And I said, “I would love to record you. I’m from a record company in New York.”

We went to the studio that same day, but he only wanted to play gospel songs. I said, “Oh, man, but we wanted some blues.” He said, “Well, I don’t sing blues anymore, I’ve found God.” I said, “But you make great blues music – this is not a bad thing – if you could just sing some blues.” “Well,” he said, “don’t put my name on it.” So I said, “OK, we’ll call you Barrelhouse Sammy.” So we made some blues records and they came out under that name until after he died, when we released them with his actual name. It would have been criminal not to let people know who he was.

Someone mentioned Professor Longhair, a musical shaman who played in a style all his own. We asked around and finally found ourselves [in New Orleans] taking a ferryboat to the other side of the Mississippi, to Algiers, where a white taxi driver would deliver us only as far as an open field. “You’re on your own,” he said, pointing to the lights of a distant village. “I ain’t going into that nigger town.” Abandoned, we trudged across the field, lit only by the light of a crescent moon. The closer we came, the more distinct the sound of distant music – some big rocking band, the rhythm exciting us and pushing us on.