ATLANTIC FOUNDER ERTEGUN CHANGED MUSIC INDUSTRY.

Byline: -- Staff and Wire Services

If you still feel electricity when you hear Wilson Pickett dig into ``In the Midnight Hour'' or the opening notes of Ray Charles' ``What I Say'' or Aretha Franklin's soaring vocals on ``Respect,'' then say a little prayer for Ahmet Ertegun, the music magnate who founded Atlantic Records.

Ertegun, who shaped the careers of John Coltrane, Charles, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin and many others, died at 83 on Thursday in Manhattan.

``Few people have had a bigger impact on the record industry than Ahmet,'' entertainment mogul David Geffen said Thursday, ``and no one loved American music more than he did.'' Geffen said that Ertegun ``started me in the record business'' in 1970 by helping Geffen to finance his own record company, Asylum, ``just as he gave many independent entrepreneurs the chance to start their own companies.''

A spokesman for Atlantic Records said Ertegun's death was the result of a brain injury suffered when he fell backstage at the Beacon Theater in Manhattan on Oct. 29 as the Rolling Stones prepared to play a concert to mark former President Clinton's 60th birthday. He had been in a coma since then.

Crossed cultural lines

Ertegun was the dapper son of a Turkish diplomatic family. He was equally at home at a high-society soiree or an 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 rhythm and blues for the pop mainstream. As Atlantic Records grew from a small independent label into a major national music company, it became a stronghold both of soul, with Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding, and of rock, with the Stones, Led Zeppelin and Yes.

Ertegun said he fell in love with music when he was 9. In 1932, his older brother, Nesuhi, 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 backstabbing is commonplace, Ertegun was admired as a shrewd businessman with a passion for the creative artists and the music he nurtured.

A $10,000 loan

Along with a partner, Herb Abramson, 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's records had developed a unique sound, best described as the mixed and polygamous marriage of Ertegun's musical loves. He and his producers mingled blues and jazz with the mambo of New Orleans, the urban blues of Chicago, the swing of Kansas City and the sophisticated rhythms and arrangements of New York.

Ertegun often signed musicians who had been seasoned on the r&b circuit, and pushed them toward perfecting their performances in the recording studio. Every so often, with his name spelled in reverse as Nugetre, Ertegun appeared as the songwriter on r&b hits like ``Chains of Love'' and ``Sweet Sixteen.''

In 1954, Atlantic released both ``I Got a Woman'' by Charles and ``Shake, Rattle, and Roll'' by Joe Turner. (Ertegun was a backup singer on ``Shake, Rattle and Roll''). The songs had a good beat, and people danced to them. They were among the strongest roots of rock 'n' roll.

The jazz connection

After his brother 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, Ertegun was selling millions of recordings by the leading soul musicians of the day, among them Franklin and Redding.

The Ertegun brothers and their partner, Jerry Wexler, sold the Atlantic label to Warner Brothers-Seven Arts in 1967 for $17 million in stock. But Ertegun kept making records. Atlantic Records signed the Stones, Led Zeppelin and Crosby, Stills and Nash, who became Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young after 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.

About his beginning, Ertegun said that he spent ``hours in a rhythm and blues record shop in the black ghetto in Washington,'' when he was a college student.

``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.

Thankfully, for us.

CAPTION(S):

photo

Photo:

Ahmet Ertegun, 83, died Thursday of a brain injury.

Kevin Winter/Getty Images