[Dixielandjazz] Ahmet Ertegun biography reviewed - New York Times, November 27, 2011

[Scott Anthony]

Most if not all of the "The Many Faces of Ragtime" are on the San Francisco 
Tradtional Jazz Foundation/GBH release "Euphonic Sounds" produced by John 
Gill and the SFTJF. We've still got lots of them available. The link is:

http://www.sftradjazz.org and click on the "Shop" button.

Shameless Plug: There is a member discount on all items we have available if 
you join the Foundation, and we need members in order to continue. Click on 
"Join" - we need you!

Scott Anthony

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Robert Ringwald" <rsr at ringwald.com>
To: <santh at comcast.net>
Cc: "Dixieland Jazz Mailing List" <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Sunday, November 27, 2011 12:37 PM
Subject: [Dixielandjazz] Ahmet Ertegun biography reviewed - New York 
Times,November 27, 2011


If I remember correctly, Turk Murphy had recorded his Ragtime album, "The 
Many Faces of Ragtime," for Atlantic.  Ahmet Ertegun was holding it.  Turk 
finally told him that if he was not going to release it, he'd take it back 
and take it somewhere else.  Then Atlantic did release it.  It is a really 
good album.  I don't know if it is out on CD.


Soul Man
by Alex Abramovich
New York Times, November 27, 2011
Ahmet Ertegun was the first person to ask Ella Fitzgerald for her autograph, 
in 1935.
He lived long enough to party for days on end with Kid Rock and Pamela 
Anderson,
and died in 2006, after falling backstage at a Rolling Stones show on the 
Upper West
Side. It wasn't the prettiest, most dignified death. But Ertegun -- who 
appreciated
good jokes, bad women, booze, bad jokes and good women, in any given 
order -- would
have enjoyed the obituaries.
Ertegun was born in Istanbul, in 1923. His father, Mehmet Munir, was 
Ataturk's legal
adviser, a practicing Muslim who helped to build secular Turkey and became 
its ambassador
to France, the Court of St. James and the United States. Ertegun -- who'd 
fallen
in love with black music after seeing Duke Ellington's band perform in 
London, in
1933 -- grew up in Washington and, together with his older brother, Nesuhi, 
put on
a series of jam sessions and jazz concerts that were among the city's first 
integrated
events. He stayed on after his father's death, in 1944, studying philosophy 
at Georgetown
and hanging out at Waxie Maxie's record store. In 1947 he moved to New York 
and formed
Atlantic Records, with money from the family dentist.
Atlantic was scrappy (staffers pushed their desks aside when it came time to 
record),
classy (the musical director Jesse Stone had done arrangements for Chick 
Webb's band,
where Ella Fitzgerald got her start) and inventive (the engineer Tom Dowd 
had been
a junior physicist on the Manhattan Project), with an all-star roster that 
soon included
Ray Charles, Ruth Brown, Joe Turner, LaVern Baker, Clyde McPhatter and 
Professor
Longhair, as well as the Drifters, Clovers, Coasters and Chords. Ertegun had 
taste,
luck and timing -- and unlike other, more mercenary industry executives, he 
actually
liked (and even understood) the music he made. By the mid-50s, Atlantic had 
become
the premier rhythm and blues label. And when its co-founder, Herb Abramson, 
was called
up by the Army in 1953, Erte­gun drafted Jerry Wexler, who'd coined the term 
"rhythm
and blues" in the first place, to replace him as a partner. And, thanks in 
part to
Wexler's input -- and his work with Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and 
Solomon Burke
-- Atlantic became one of the very few independent record companies to 
survive and
thrive in the wake of the British Invasion.
This story is well worth telling, and it's been told quite well, in 
histories of
Atlantic by Charlie Gillett and by Dorothy Wade and Justine Picardie; in a 
massive
coffee-table book assembled by and/or for Ertegun himself; and (most 
notably) in
a remarkable New Yorker profile by George W. S. Trow. The music writer 
Robert Greenfield
draws heavily on all these sources, and quite a few others, in "The Last 
Sultan."
But Greenfield's book, the first posthumous biography of Ertegun, is also 
the first
to bring Ertegun's story up to date, and put it in perspective. Given the 
charm and
joie de vivre that were Ertegun's most marked characteristics (and that also 
characterized
Greenfield's own, best book, "Bill Graham Presents"), the biography takes a 
few surprising
turns.
Greenfield spends nine chapters on Ertegun's early life and Atlantic's 
glorious opening
act: well-worn territory that he fleshes out and adds to. Take, for 
instance, the
story of Herb Abramson, who returned from the Army in 1955 and was 
eventually booted
from the label. According to Gillett, Abramson returned to find that "Jerry 
Wexler
was in his seat and couldn't be moved." According to Wade and Picardie, 
Abramson
-- whose wife, Miriam, ran Atlantic's day-to-day operations -- returned from 
Germany
with a girlfriend (or, as Wexler put it, "a Brunnhilde!"). In Greenfield's 
account,
Abramson returns with the girlfriend and a drug habit. ("'Herb was snorting 
cocaine,'
someone who knew Abramson well during this period would later confirm.") 
Greenfield
uncovers other unsavory details, many of them drawn from interviews with 
businessmen
who worked with Atlantic and Ertegun. The Atlantic files "had every disc 
jockey in
the United States's shoe size, hat size, preference in women and drugs of 
choice,"
one says. "It was a very dirty business, and the black side was particularly 
dirty."
As it happens, Ertegun had cleaner hands than many of his competitors, was 
better
at paying out royalties and tended to be loyal to his artists. By industry 
standards,
the ambassador's son was a prince. And yet he had his weaknesses, which 
Greenfield
-- who dedicates his book to Ertegun's widow, Mica, and sister, Selma 
Goksel -- isn't
shy about enumerating. Here's Ahmet, "lying beneath a glass coffee table" 
while a
call girl does "unspeakable things on the other side of the glass." There he 
is,
flicking cigarette ashes onto David Geffen's head, or replacing Jerry 
Wexler's passport
photograph "with that of a woman having sex with a donkey." "The Last 
Sultan" takes
its title from something one latter-day mistress -- "a striking 34-year-old 
blond
French dermatologist" -- tells the biographer: "Ahmet was the last sultan of 
Turkey,"
she explains. "A man of this dimension will never stay with one ­woman."
Some of this stuff is amusing. ("When Wexler presented his passport at the 
airport
in Paris," Greenfield writes, "the gendarme looked at the photo and then at 
Wexler
and then back at the photo again. Trying to be helpful, Wexler said, 'I used 
to have
a beard.'") Some of it is not. ("He was a misogynist," Laura Brani­gan's 
former manager
recalls. "He didn't have a lot of respect for women. He was sleeping with 
every artist
he could, including Laura.") Greenfield lets the chips fall where they may: 
despite
its dedication, this is not your run-of-the-mill music-biz hagiography. But 
because
Ertegun's life story follows the basic outlines of the industry he helped to 
create,
Greenfield's book does become a lot less interesting as it goes along.
In the later chapters, Greenfield describes Ertegun's move away from the 
black music
he loved and championed, toward white bands -- Cream, Led Zeppelin, the 
Rolling Stones
-- whose affinity for black music drew them to sign with Atlantic, and, 
finally,
toward Hootie and the Blowfish. Ertegun survives palace coups (one of which 
results
in Wexler's departure from the label), mergers and acquisitions, and 
cocaine-filled
nights at Studio 54. But the glorified accountants Greenfield debriefs fall 
flat
compared with the characters he's described in the book's opening pages.
By the end, Ertegun ends up with four palatial homes, custom-made Louis 
Vuitton cases
(for his collection of handmade shoes) and friendships with Donald Rumsfeld 
and Henry
Kissinger. His biographer ends up listing the "symptoms traditionally 
associated
with listeria" ("fever, muscle aches and nausea or diarrhea"), with which 
Ertegun
survived "a protracted bout." "Just like Herb Abramson, Jerry Wexler, David 
Geffen
and Jerry Greenberg," Greenfield writes, in a passage that epitomizes the 
book's
shift toward people most of us have never heard of (and wouldn't care to 
hear about
again), "Doug Morris was now someone with whom Ahmet had once worked at 
Atlantic.
They were now all gone, but he was still there. In the end, this was always 
what
Ahmet had cared about most."
This is a strange, sad, "Citizen Kane"-like slide for a man who never lacked 
for
company.
__________
Alex Abramovich is writing a history of rock 'n' roll.


--Bob Ringwald
www.ringwald.com
Fulton Street Jazz Band
530/ 642-9551 Office
916/ 806-9551 Cell
Amateur (Ham) Radio K6YBV

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