Those who have seen the biopic Ray would have gotten a mere taste of the other genius behind Ray Charles' rise to greatness. Thanks to his father's decision on a career as a diplomat, Ahmet Ertegun (and brother Neshui) came to the United States, and the rest is history - but what a history.

The following excerpted obit (we've lost a lot of the great ones recently) appeared in the New York Times of December 15 and says it much better than anything I could proffer:
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 yesterday[Thursday] in Manhattan. He was 83.

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 October 29 as the Rolling Stones prepared to play a concert that marked former [US] President Bill Clinton's 60th birthday. He had been in a coma since then.

Mr Ertegun was equally at home at a high-society soiree or a rhythm and blues club, the kind of place where, in the 1950s, he found the performers who went on to make hits for Atlantic Records, one of the most successful American independent music labels.

He was an astute judge of both musical talent and business potential, surrounding himself with skillful producers and remaking r&b for the pop mainstream. As Atlantic Records grew from a small independent label into a major national music company, it became a stronghold of soul, with Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding, and of rock, with the Stones, Led Zeppelin and Yes.

Ever conscious of the music's roots, Mr Ertegun was also a prime mover in starting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. In a music career marked by numerous lifetime achievement awards, he was inducted into the Hall in 1987.
Mr Ertegun said he fell in love with music when he was 9. In 1932, his older brother, Neshui, took him to see the Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway orchestras at the Palladium Theater in London . The beauty of the jazz, the power of the beat and the elegance of the musicians made a lasting impression.

His instincts were not impeccable. He lost out on chances to sign the Beatles and Elvis Presley. But in an industry in which back-stabbing is commonplace, Mr Ertegun was admired as a shrewd businessman with a passion for the creative artistes and the music he nurtured.

Along with a partner, Herb Abramson, Mr Ertegun founded Atlantic Records in 1947 in an office in a derelict hotel on West 56th Street in Manhattan. His initial investment of $10,000 was borrowed from his family dentist.

By the 1950s, Atlantic developed a unique sound, best described as the mixed and polygamous marriage of Mr Ertegun's musical loves. He and his producers mingled blues and jazz with mambo, the urban blues of Chicago, the swing of Kansas City and the sophisticated rhythms and arrangements of New York.
Mr Ertegun often signed musicians who had been seasoned on the r&b circuit, and pushed them towards perfecting their performances in the recording studio.

Ever so often, with his name spelled in reverse as Nugetre, Mr Ertegun appeared as the songwriter on r&b hits like Chains Of Love and Sweet Sixteen.
In 1954, Atlantic released both Ray Charles' I Got A Woman and Shake, Rattle And Roll by Joe Turner. (Mr Ertegun was a backup singer on the latter).

After his brother Nesuhi joined Atlantic in 1956, the label attracted many of the most inventive jazz musicians of the era, including Coltrane, Charles Mingus, the Modern Jazz Quartet and Ornette Coleman.

In 1957, Atlantic was among the first labels to record in stereo.
By the 1960s, often in partnerships with local labels like Stax in Memphis, Mr Ertegun was selling millions of records by the leading soul musicians of the day, among them Franklin and Redding. Ms Franklin had recorded previously for Columbia Records, but her hits for Atlantic - which merged her gospel roots with an earthy strength and sensuality - were the ones that made her the Queen of Soul.
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 artistes they produced, particularly when the label began, were black. Together, they helped move rhythm and blues to the centre of American popular music.

Mr Ertegun and Ioana Maria Banu were married on April 6, 1961. Known as Mica, she became a prominent interior designer. She survives him, as does a sister. Neshui Ertegun died in 1989.
The Ertegun brothers and their partner, Mr Wexler, sold the Atlantic label to Warner Brothers-Seven Arts in 1967 for $17 million in stock. Four years later, the brothers took some of the money and founded the New York Cosmos soccer team.

But Mr Ertegun kept making records. When Kinney National Service - a conglomerate of parking lots, funeral parlors, rental cars and other unmusical enterprises - completed the acquisition of Warner Brothers-Seven Arts in 1969, he and his label kept going.

Mr Ertegun was now a rock mogul. Atlantic Records signed the Stones to a distribution deal when the band's contract with Decca Records ended; Led Zeppelin; and Crosby, Stills & Nash, who became Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young after Mr Ertegun persuaded Neil Young to join the group. The corporations changed - Kinney turned into Warner Communications, which became Time Warner - but Atlantic and its founder still flourished.

It remained one of the only record labels of the 1940s to survive the multibillion-dollar mergers and acquisitions of the 1990s in more than name only, with its founder still in charge. Mr Ertegun reduced his daily corporate duties in 1996, but remained an inveterate night-clubber, avid concert-goer and insatiable music maven well into his 80s.

His father, Mehmet Munir, was the legal counsellor to modern Turkey's founder, Kemal Ataturk. In 1925, Ataturk sent the elder Ertegun to serve as the Turkish representative to the League of Nations.

In the next 20 years, he was the Turkish ambassador to Switzerland, to France, to the Court of St James under King George V and to the United States during the Roosevelt administration. The young Ahmet grew up in that worldly realm. His father, then the dean of the diplomatic corps in Washington , died in 1944.

That year, at 21, having earned a bachelor's degree at St John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, Mr Ertegun was taking graduate courses in medieval philosophy at Georgetown University.
"In between, I spent hours in a rhythm and blues record shop in the black ghetto in Washington," he told the graduates of Berklee College of Music in Boston on receiving an honorary degree in 1991.
"Almost every night, I went to the Howard Theater and to various jazz and blues clubs.

I had to decide whether I would go into a scholastic life or go back to Turkey in the diplomatic service, or do something else," he said. "What I really loved was music, jazz, blues, and hanging out." And so, he told the students, he did what he loved.

More Jazz News from Sonny
'The Musicman' has followed his previous bulletin, with another welcome dispatch combining news from the UK, US as well as at home:

JAMAICA JAZZ NEWS (UK) By Musicman DECEMBER

2006 ..MOBO that glitzy annual British Music Awards, forgot its own name, Music Of Black Origin, when it scrapped Jazz Awards from their slate, the very music that all black musics came from and still do, and the black jazz musicians trumpeter Abram Wilson, saxophonist Soweto Kinch , saxophonist Jason Yarde, bassist & teacher Gary Crosby and others staged a protest demonstration that hit local TV news, bulletins, and London Evening papers..
...what we have to do to protect Black Classical Music ......Western white classical Music found a rescue team of Rosina Moder, recorder player and teacher and violinist & keyboard teacher Peter Ashbourne when they presented a concert at the Chapel UWI highlighting the work of the classical giants .....Dragonaires leader Byron Lee recovering after surgery in Miami, missing the bands performance in China, but getting ready for The Jamaica Carnival 2007 ...swinging jazz singer Anita O'Day passed away, we remember her with Stan Kenton's big big band....Jamaican trumpet player Dizzy Reece will unveil his new works on CD Nirvana at The Rubin Museum Of Arts in New York in January..........congrats to Sean Paul (Henriques) topping the pop music awards at home and abroad bringing a new kind of DJ image to The Jamaica Popular Music and suffering 'reggay' in particular..a kind word to our media commentators and DJ's - a Song /Tune/Melody is a collection and combination of musical notes sometimes put together with words/poems over a rhythmic pattern....simple ....to my dear Prime Minister - the only single unifying force in Jamaica is NOT Sport - It's MUSIC madam......the 70-million dollar Air Jamaica Jazz & Blues Festival is coming up roses with additions flugelhorn Chuck Mangonie, and vibist Roy Ayers added to the bill for January 26 and Herbie Miller and his friends of jazz should be glad to know Maas Walter is out there on the job trying to find jazz and blues acts.....best of luck..Legit payola at Virgin Record Stores as independent labels and artists must now pay 250 pounds to get into top 20 displays in the store....Of the 20 radio stations in Jamaica, today we must big up Errol Smith at 102 FM for playing one black music-jazz artist or musician on his daily morning programme..Sarah. Billie.

Armstrong. Trane. Horace Silver. Nat & Natalie, wow....CVM-TV broadcast a Diana Ross Concert with a terrific band with ultra trumpeter Jon Faddis ...fantastic music, music, music, followed by To-Isis in Concert featuring Ebony girl Claudette Miller Revue entertaining, good costumes, singing, dancing....did they say this kind of show was gone forever .....The career of our jazz music legend guitarist-arranger Ernie Ranglin was a feature in a film documentary Roots Of Reggae at the recent Flashpoint Film Festival at The Caves in Negril....

contact: jazzfest1@cwjamaica.com

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