ThroughTheLonelyNights Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> rrronnie Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > "I can't imagine a world without the Rolling
> > Stones" - wasn't that his sentence?
> > He was with the Stones till the end of his life
> -
> > RIP !
>
>
> No - I think this was Bill Graham, who said that -
> as far as I remember from a TV interview
>
> But anyway RIP Mr Ertegün



No, I think it WAS actually Ahmet. Its in the 'Let it Bleed' documentary

A somewhat ironic comment considering where he was when he had the accident that eventually led to his death

"thank you kindly"...

So sad and thoughts to Mica and Family

But the guess is your in good company with some of the greats
Brother Ray...Clyde McPhatter....Jackie Wilson....Big Joe Turner....


Melbourne Herald Sun 16 December 2006




Geelong Advertiser 16 December 2006


Christopher Sykes



Here's hoping that R&B Angels are singing for you Ahmet...

TAKE CARE



ROCKMAN

RIP Ahmet! The industry and the world will miss you immensely.

:-(

RIP, Omlette!

Wasn't he somehow connected with the establishment of Rolling Stones Records, or maybe they were just distributed by Atlantic?

The Stones must feel really bad about him taking that fall at the Beacon show, just the fact that it happened at one of their shows.


Plexigl

[www.nytimes.com]

if the link works for you there is also an interactive slide show with music and narration in today's (saturday) nytimes...
(tho it's just after midnight friday night pst as i edit in this in...)

if you have trouble with the link, or don't want to register (free), here's the piece:
_________________________________________________
By JON PARELES
Published: December 16, 2006

The sheer improbability of Ahmet Ertegun’s career makes it an all-American success story: the tale of an outsider, from Turkey no less, who loved African-American music so much that he became a major force in pop history. Points of friction in American culture — class, ethnicity, race, religion — mostly provided him with sparks.

Mr. Ertegun, who died on Thursday at 83, was an old-school music mogul, a self-invented character with the urge to start a record company. He was, by all accounts, a charmer: a man of wealth and taste who had stories to tell, a shrewd business sense and a keen appreciation of all sorts of pleasure. He wasn’t a musician, but he had an ear for a hit, one that served him for half a century.

When Mr. Ertegun and a partner floated Atlantic Records in 1947 with a $10,000 loan from a dentist, it was one among many small independent labels trying to serve the taste of postwar America. But as the others had their handfuls of hit singles and disappeared, Atlantic kept growing. With Mr. Ertegun as chairman, the job he held until his death, it was a major label by the 1960s, the home of multimillion-sellers like Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones in the 1970s and the core of the Warner Music conglomerate that continues to survive in the currently embattled recording business.

David Geffen, the entertainment mogul, said yesterday that he had once asked Mr. Ertegun how to make money in the music business. Mr. Ertegun said he would demonstrate, got up from his chair, hunched over and shuffled slowly across the room. Mr. Geffen didn’t understand, so Mr. Ertegun did it twice more. Finally he explained: “ ‘If you’re lucky, you bump into a genius, and a genius will make you rich in the music business,’ ” Mr. Geffen recalled. “Ahmet bumped into an awful lot of geniuses.”

He looked for those geniuses in places where no one would expect to find the European-educated son of a Turkish diplomat. Living in a segregated Washington, Mr. Ertegun was drawn to jazz and to rhythm and blues, and he began a lifetime habit of going to dives to hear the real thing. Mr. Ertegun moved easily between high society and the kind of ghetto basement club where he first heard Ruth Brown, whose hits through the 1950s were the label’s bulwark. He sought out singers who had something startling, something untamed, in their voices: singers like Ms. Brown, Ray Charles, Clyde McPhatter, the Coasters, Solomon Burke and Aretha Franklin.

He cherished the down-home passion he heard. But his outsider’s ear may have helped him produce music that could aim for an audience beyond what the record business was calling “race music.” Even on low-budget recordings — for years, Atlantic’s Midtown Manhattan business office by day was its recording studio by night — he and his control-room collaborators sought a sonic clarity and definition that made Atlantic’s singles stand out on the radio. Unlike his 1950s contemporaries at Chess Records (home of Chuck Berry) and Sun Records (where Elvis Presley made his debut), Mr. Ertegun didn’t gear Atlantic’s songs particularly toward teenagers. Although Ruth Brown sounded girlish in a song like “(Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean,” many of Atlantic’s 1950s rhythm and blues songs were simply steeped in the blues.

Part of what Mr. Ertegun also heard in his cherished singers was the sound of the gospel church. Mr. Charles merged the beat and the call-and-response of sanctified church music with considerably more secular implications in songs like “What’d I Say.” Mr. Ertegun, who was born a Muslim, worked with church-rooted African-American musicians and Jewish producers, notably Jerry Wexler, on many Atlantic hits; that interfaith coalition helped forge soul music. Before her stint at Atlantic, Ms. Franklin had made albums for Columbia Records, but she had sung ballads and jazz standards. When she recorded for Atlantic, her sound moved back toward the church and she became the Queen of Soul.

After the 1950s, Mr. Ertegun was more a deal maker than a control-room producer. But his ear stayed reliable. Atlantic picked up the Southern soul of Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, and when British rockers began recycling American blues and rhythm and blues, he latched on to bands like Cream and Led Zeppelin. Atlantic’s R&B pedigree helped bring the Rolling Stones to the label for their commercial heyday in the 1970s, leading to decades of society-column photos of Mick Jagger with Mr. Ertegun. (Mr. Ertegun died after being injured in a fall backstage before a Rolling Stones concert on Oct. 29.) But Mr. Ertegun didn’t abandon his business judgment. When the Stones received a lucrative offer from Virgin Records for their next contract, Mr. Ertegun let them go.

Like other labels of the ’40s and ’50s, Atlantic made contracts with its early artists that now seem exploitative. On the eve of the label’s 40th anniversary, Ruth Brown made loud public complaints about her lack of royalties, and Atlantic agreed to waive unrecouped debts for Ms. Brown and other musicians on its early roster, and to pay 20 years of back royalties. The label also contributed nearly $2 million to start the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, which pressured other labels toward royalty reform and gave money to needy musicians.

Mr. Ertegun was also a prime mover in starting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, another nod to history. In 2005 he told the online magazine Slate that he wanted his legacy to be that “I did a little bit to raise the dignity and recognition of the greatness of African-American music.”

Through the decades, Mr. Ertegun never stopped visiting his beloved dives, from R&B lounges to punk clubs. He always stood out, dressed in his bespoke suits and expensive shoes; he never lost his Turkish accent. But he was an outsider who had become something more than an insider, an American phenomenon who proved the best way to cross boundaries was with the promise of a good time.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2006-12-16 10:41 by Beelyboy.

rrronnie Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "I can't imagine a world without the Rolling
> Stones" - wasn't that his sentence?
> He was with the Stones till the end of his life -
> RIP !


I am sure He said that legendary sentence.

A true supporter of Music. Sad News. R.I.P. Bless Him.

Yeah the guy produced Big Joe Turner's - Shake Rattle & Roll
A dirty slice of rockin' R&B and one of the best sounding songs from the 50's
.....and that alone is enough for Ahmet to be carved into the Rushmore of rock.



ROCKMAN

Daily Telegraph obituary 18/12/06

Ahmet Ertegun
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 18/12/2006Page 1 of 3



Ahmet Ertegun, who has died aged 83, was the Turkish founder of Atlantic Records; he was its chief executive and chairman for more than 50 years, during which time he built the label from a tiny independent, operating out of a condemned hotel, into one of the world's largest and most respected music companies.

An ambassador's son and music obsessive equally at ease in diplomatic society and the jazz clubs of Harlem, Ertegun began by building a roster of rhythm and blues artists he located on trips to the Deep South.

But, ever perceptive to shifting tastes, he gradually expanded beyond the bluesmen to sign soul acts, rock 'n' rollers, disco kings and rap artists, in the process earning himself the reputation as "the savviest and suavest executive in the history of American recorded music".

advertisementBut Ertegun was not without his critics. The chameleon qualities that allowed him to flit between black and white music, high and low life, clubland and the corporate world, also enabled him cold-heartedly to alter course.

Consequently, many lamented that a label so intimate with the history of black music and, by implication, the birth of rock 'n' roll should, by the mid-1980s, have become home to such reactionary giants as Foreigner and Phil Collins. As Doc Pomus, the Atlantic veteran who wrote Save The Last Dance For Me, observed: "Once they had a stable of great artists, now they have a stable of great money-makers."

To criticise, however, was to misunderstand the nature of the man. Ertegun was passionate about all music, but happy to move with the times. Even in his early 80s he would leave his house on the Upper East Side to slip into the clubs of Harlem. Often it was rap rather than jazz that he heard, but his response never altered: "Even though, at 70, you're not able to feel exactly the emotions of a 16-year-old girl, you can understand why the music is appealing."

Ahmet Ertegun was born on July 31 1923 in Turkey. His father was ambassador successively to Switzerland, France and Britain and Ahmet was educated by governesses in those countries. He was introduced to jazz by his brother, Nesuhi, who was attending the Sorbonne, and from an early age they frequented the jazz clubs of the Left Bank.

When his father was posted to Washington in 1934, Ahmet found that he knew more about black American music from Paris than did the Americans themselves.

Unusually for the children of an ambassador, the brothers canvassed door-to-door in black neighbourhoods, buying "race" (jazz and blues) records until they had amassed a collection of more than 25,000. Ahmet would spend 10 hours a day listening to music in a state room corralled for the purpose: "I would make like I was reading books," he said. "Which I was. Some of the time."

Encouraged by the boys' mother, who was a keen dancer and gambler, the embassy became a musical retreat. The ambassador hosted Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Lester Young for Sunday lunch and impromptu jazz sessions after his sons had vaulted the Jim Crow laws and befriended them in the clubs of Washington DC. Years later, in Los Angeles, Ertegun met Nat King Cole, who exclaimed: "You weren't that little Turkish kid, were you?"

Once, when Ahmet was in New York with his father, the ambassador's chauffeur dropped the 14-year-old at a cinema in Times Square, only for the boy to catch a cab uptown to hear "Hot Lips" Page at the Plantation Club. By the time he had returned to his father's hotel — at 4am — a major police search had been launched.

Ahmet Ertegun attended St John's College, Annapolis, then studied Classical Philosophy at Georgetown University, but his gilded existence ended with the death of his father in 1944. When their mother returned to Turkey, the brothers supplemented their income by selling their record collection. "It was like selling my soul," he later said.

In 1947 Ahmet and a friend, Herb Abramson, formed Atlantic Records in New York, the name being a counterpoint to Pacific Jazz, a label both of them admired. They raised money from the family dentist, who mortgaged his house to invest $10,000, and the company opened in the derelict Jefferson Hotel on West 56th Street.

But when neither their first recording (The Rose Of The Rio Grande by the Harlemaires) nor its successors managed to chart, the pair travelled south to try to understand why their records were failing to sell. Night after night they watched young people in clubs dancing in a new style, for which the budding entrepreneurs' classy, urbane beat was inappropriate. Returning to New York they injected country blues and the New Orleans sound of Professor Longhair into their sophisticated city music to create "the Atlantic Sound", and in April 1949 had their first hit, Stick McGhee's Drinkin' Wine Sop-Dee-O-Dee.

As Atlantic expanded, Ertegun — "a paradox of enthusiastic involvement and droll detachment" — was in his element. He cruised the clubs of Manhattan, talent-spotted in the Deep South, and acted as producer, backing vocalist, manager, and even composer — he had 12 hits under the pseudonym A Nugetre (his name spelt backwards), including Chains of Love and Mess Around.

He also took on the role of a sort of agony uncle. "I have a direct relationship with our artists," he said. "They trust you more if you understand the music. That's why we survive."

But Atlantic was not merely surviving; it was flourishing. In the summer of 1954 seven Atlantic songs by the Drifters were covered by 18 different artists; and, although they were outbid for Elvis Presley, in 1956 Nesuhi Ertegun joined the company to expand the jazz label, attracting John Coltrane, Charlie Mingus and Ornette Coleman.

advertisementBy the end of the 1950s Atlantic was the premier R&B label in the United States and was challenging the hegemony of the major labels, RCA, Columbia and Decca.

The company housed talent of the calibre of the producer Jerry Wexler, the engineer Tom Dowd and the arranger Jesse Stone as well as Phil Spector (who served as Ertegun's apprentice for a short period in the early 1960s), in addition to a roster of artists that included Ray Charles, Bobby Darin, John Lee Hooker and Lieber and Stoller.

But in 1964, when the Beatles occupied the top five positions in the American chart, Ertegun knew that it was time to move on. Although he continued to develop the careers of artists such as Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett, linking them with house bands at Memphis and Muscle Shoals, and although Atlantic became the dominant soul label of the decade, Ertegun's interest had switched to white boys' rock. He added Eric Clapton and Cream to the label, Sonny and Cher and, finally, Led Zeppelin.

But as the hit machine grew, so Ertegun found himself under pressure from his partners, Wexler and Nesuhi, to sell the company. Finally, in 1967, he sold Atlantic Records to Warner Seven Arts for $17.5 million, a sum that appeared derisory when, the following year, the company, due to Aretha Franklin's success, grossed more than $40 million. Ertegun's immediate offer to buy it back for $45 million was politely declined, but the terms of his employment ensured that he remained an exceptionally wealthy man.

Having realised a dream by signing the Rolling Stones (Mick Jagger, who "hated pushy people", was reportedly impressed when Ertegun fell asleep during negotiations at LA's Whiskey-A-Go-Go), Atlantic cranked up its rock roster throughout the 1970s, signing acts ranging from Foreigner to Dire Straits.

But although many bands, including the Stones, had been attracted to Atlantic by its historical importance, within the company there was increasing tension over that legacy. In 1975 Wexler, the architect of the R&B division, left, citing the lack of interest in black music and the fact that Ertegun had become "less judgmental and more commercial".

Certainly Ertegun kept his nose to the ground, nudging the label towards disco — the only genre for which he professed no enthusiasm — by signing the Bee Gees, and letting the Stones, for whom he had fought so hard, leave the company when it became obvious that they no longer shifted units in sufficient quantities. But for all the criticism, as he acquired the soul parodies Simply Red and middle-of-the-road groups such as The Corrs, there could be no doubting the scope of his achievement. The New Yorker observed: "In a business in which executives, however successful, were overshadowed by hippies, druggies, spies, spades, transvestites and Englishmen, Ahmet Ertegun was an exception. He had the stature in his line of work that Irving Thalberg and Louis B Mayer had in theirs."

As Ertegun attained status within Manhattan society, so he expanded his brief. He was president of the New York Cosmos football team for many years, and sat on the board of directors of the North American Soccer League and the 1994 USA World Cup. He co-founded the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, into which he was inducted in 1987, and was chairman of the American Turkish Society; he maintained close links with the expatriate community, for which he worked across a range of charitable causes.

He entertained regally on his yachts in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, and at houses in Manhattan, Los Angeles, Paris, London and on Long Island. A man who seemed to know everyone, Ertegun's guests ranged from Princess Margaret and Henry Kissinger to Mick Jagger and Pele. He was the subject of a biography, Music Man by Justine Picardie and Dorothy Wade, and of What'd I Say: The Atlantic Story.

He owned works by Picasso, Matisse and Magritte and built an impressive collection of pre-1940 American abstract art. He never missed a party and, after taking in a club, was rarely home on time.

On October 29 Ertegun was attending the Rolling Stones concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York when he fell, suffering a head injury. While being treated in hospital he slipped into a coma; he died on December 14.

Ahmet Ertegun married, first, Jan Holm and subsequently the Romanian interior designer Mica Banu Grecianu, whom he courted by hiding a small orchestra in the bathroom of her suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Montreal to surprise her with a rendition of Puttin' On The Ritz. There were no children by either marriage.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2006-12-18 16:40 by Stargroves.

Melbourne Age - 19 December 2006



ROCKMAN

Turkish foreign minister Abdullah Gul (5th from right) attends Ahmet Ertegun's funeral at a mosque in Istanbul, Turkey on Monday 18 December 2006. Ahmet Ertegun, the music magnate who founded Atlantic Records and shaped the careers of John Coltrane, Ray Charles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and many others, died on 14 December in Manhattan. He was 83. EPA/TOLGA BOZOGLU



ROCKMAN

Kid Rock joined hundreds of mourners at Monday's funeral in Istanbul for Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun. Warnaco Group CEO Linda Wachner loaned Ertegun's widow, Mica, her jet to bring Mica's beloved back to his homeland. The 83-year-old music legend died last week after injuring his head at an Oct. 29 Rolling Stones concert. Friends say Ertegun, who used two canes, fell once in a bathroom at the Beacon Theater, managed to get up, then tumbled again down some stairs. Martin Scorsese, who was filming the concert, was unaware of the accident at the time. But the director, who introduced his pal Robert De Niro at Monday's AARP Magazine's Impact Awards here, told us: "From what I understand, [partying with the Stones] would have been the way Ahmet would have wanted to go."…

New York Daily News, NY



ROCKMAN

NumberOneStonesFan,

My impression was that Mr. Ertegun fell before the concert that night, from news articles at the time.

Doing some research through Google, I found that most articles did not say whether it was before or after, and I found two that mentioned "before".

(At least he got into the Beacon. Okay, sorry. His death is sad.)

Rock industry giant fights for life after fall at Clinton's party
By SHARON CHURCHER, Mail on Sunday

The man who helped to take the Rolling Stones to superstardom was left fighting for life after falling backstage at a New York performance by the band.
Record mogul Ahmet Ertegun - who signed the band in the early Seventies at a time of uncertainty for them - had been backstage as Mick Jagger and Co performed at Bill Clinton's 60th birthday party last Sunday in Manhattan.
But just before they went onstage, the 83-year-old record label boss slipped and fell, badly injuring his head.
When Jagger - who had begged Ertegun to sign the band 30 years ago - came offstage he was devastated to find his mentor missing. The Mail on Sunday understands Ertegun was put into an induced coma before being taken to hospital.
"Mick was terribly upset," a Stones aide said. "Ahmet was unconscious in the intensive care unit and the doctors at first didn't give him much of a chance. But they are now listing him as stable.
Although his condition is still seriousm they are more optimistic because he has come round under his own steam. He has now been taken off the respirator, is breathing on his own and has even started to say a few words."
At Ertegun's home, his wife Mica, an internationally renowned interior decorator, was too upset to comment.
Turkish-born Ertegun's career has been extraordinary - both in its success and longevity within a notoriously fickle business.
He was studying philosophy at Georgetown University when he borrowed £6,000 from his family dentist to found Atlantic Records with Herb Abramson, who had a few contacts in the record business, in 1947.
Today the New York-based Atlantic catalogue reads like a Who's Who of jazz, R&B and rock 'n' roll. Ertegun also signed Ray Charles, Duke Ellington, Aretha Franklin and Led Zeppelin.
Ertegun recalled in an interview in 2002 the night that led to him signing the Stones. He said: "I met Mick at midnight at the Whisky A Go-Go in Los Angeles. I thought we were just getting together socially.
"Then Mick started to talk about how the Stones contract was up and how they wanted to be on Atlantic somehow I dozed off, which I think impressed him quite a lot."
Atlantic landed the Stones but the label couldn't meet the £25,000 asking price for Elvis Presley's contract in the mid-Fifties. The King signed with RCA Victor instead.
Atlantic is still going strong. In the same interview, Ertegun quipped: "I'm proud of two things - I'm still alive and still employed. I had no idea I would end up spending my life in the music business. I was a great music fan... I thought I knew enough to make a success of it - at least for a while."
Ertegun's fall is the latest setback for the Stones. Jagger, 63, had to overcome laryngitis to sing at Clinton's party and last Friday Art Wood, older brother of Ronnie, died of pneumonia.
In addition, drummer Charlie Watts has fought throat cancer and Keith Richards underwent brain surgery last spring after banging his head falling out of a coconut tree in Fiji.

[www.dailymail.co.uk]

erikjjf Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------

> last Friday Art Wood, older brother of Ronnie, died of pneumonia.

RIP Art.

Thanks Erik, that's sad news. Didn't know about Art Wood either

Oh, that's indeed sad news. RIP Art.

Sad story all around - Ahmet Ertegun is a legend and one of the few good guys...

Damn. What a tragedy.
Get better Ahmed.
RIP Art.

JumpingKentFlash

That's sad news,
I hope AHmet will get better.

Ahmet is a classsy man and I sure hope he is back on his feet soon! Not only has he given sage advice and help to the Stones for over 30 years,he obviously is considered a friend of theirs. THey ceetainly don't need more stress on this tour! Didn't hear about Art Wood, that's really sad, sorry for Ronnie!

<<<<< and last Friday Art Wood, older brother of Ronnie, died of pneumonia >>>>>

Tragedy. To have seen this guy was a privilege, he was fantastic. Saw him several times in the Cabbage Patch in Twickenham. RIP Art Wood, condolences to the Wood family.

if Art wood died friday, maybe that was the real reason they cancelled AC?

That's a possibility

Bad news indeed.
Get well soon, Ahmet.
Rest in peace, Art.
Condolences to Ron & familiy.

Bad news. Hope Ahmet will recover soon. Gentleman of Honor.

"The Mail on Sunday understands Ertegun was put into an induced coma before being taken to hospital."

An induced coma??

Yes, induced coma helps doctors isolate specific areas of the brain for observation. It also helps the brain rejuvinate. This is common practice for sever head trauma.

Same thing for Keith's injury? Asking, I don't know.