Rock 'n' roll is showing its age, with recent books by "senior" rockers like Keith Richards and Patti Smith. Many icons of that era might never have made it out of the juke joints and basement clubs where they paid their dues were it not for Ahmet Ertegun and Atlantic Records. Now Ertegun gets a new biography (the first in two decades) by Robert Greenfield, a music critic who's chronicled the 1960s through the lives of Bill Graham, Timothy Leary and Jerry Garcia.
Greenfield is the right guy to tell Ertegun's amazing story. He was there when Ertegun, the ambitious son of a Turkish ambassador, made the deal that secured his place in rock history--signing the Rolling Stones to Atlantic when they left Decca. Wining and dining Jagger and Richards was old hat to Ertegun; even as a teenager he had been throwing parties, filling the Turkish Embassy in Washington with the finest jazz musicians in the country. Forget New York; his real start in music was prowling the clubs and record stores on D.C.'s U Street in the 1930s, when he "used to be the only white person" on the block.
Ertegun and Atlantic Records created the soundtrack of 20th-century jazz, R&B and rock 'n' roll, from Ray Charles and the Coasters to Mingus and Monk to Led Zeppelin, Iron Butterfly and, of course, the Stones. Think of Greenfield's comprehensive biography of Ertegun as the liner notes to this soundtrack. –-Bruce Jacobs, founding partner, Watermark Books & Cafe, Wichita, Kans.