A well-respected mogul from back in the day when the suits who ran the music labels really cared about music instead of just milking profits repackaging the same crap, and adding DRM.
Mr. Ertegun's label has given my ears lots of pleasure over my long career as a rock snob. ahem.
Funny who different newspapers choose to populate their leads with. The Guardian uses Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin:
Atlantic Records founder dies aged 83
Ahmet Ertegun, the Turkish diplomat's son who launched Atlantic Records and the careers of acts ranging from Ray Charles to Aretha Franklin, has died.
while the NYT uses the Stones and 'Trane.
Ahmet Ertegun, Music Executive, Dies at 83
Ahmet Ertegun founded Atlantic Records and shaped the careers of John Coltrane and the Rolling Stones.
and sort of a strange coda
A spokesman for Atlantic Records said the death was the result of a brain injury suffered when Mr. Ertegun fell backstage at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan on Oct. 29 as the Rolling Stones prepared to play a concert that marked former President Bill Clinton’s 60th birthday. He had been in a coma since then.
Guardian UK:
...Atlantic's roster included huge stars: Professor Longhair, the Drifters, Led Zeppelin, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Cream, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Dusty Springfield, Genesis, AC/DC, the Bee Gees, Bette Midler, the Allman Brothers Band, the Three Tenors and latterly James Blunt.Launched in 1947 as a short-term outlet for Ertegun's fixation with the jazz and blues that was largely unknown to most Americans, Atlantic grew into one of the world's biggest record companies. Ertegun was founding chairman, surviving various ownership changes since he and his partners sold the label in 1967 for $20m.
He was one of the first recording executives to sell music by black artists to white youngsters looking for something exciting in the conformist Eisenhower era of the 1950s, and in so doing, he helped pioneer rock'n'roll.
and this is the only kind of triangulation I appreciate:
Mr. Ertegun’s music partnerships, he sometimes pointed out, were often culturally triangular. He was Turkish and a Muslim by birth. Many of his fellow executives, like the producer Jerry Wexler, were Jewish. The artists they produced, particularly when the label began, were black. Together, they helped move rhythm and blues to the center of American popular music.
