Word: ertegun
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...Before Leiber and Stroller came to Atlantic, Ertegun did a little of everything: scouted and signed acts, produced sides, wrote songs. But the lyrics weren?t exactly sophisticated (example: "Don?t you know I love you, love you so/ Don?t you know I love you, love you so/ Don?t you know I love you so/ And I?ll never let you go/ Don?t you know I love you, love you so") and the production values came up a little short in the jizz category...
...Ertegun and his partner Jerry Wexler needed three things: a performer to summarize and transcend the blues form; a white singer the kids could call their own; and a writer-producer team to synthesize black music for the mass market that didn?t even know it needed a seismic sonic jolt. With these elements, Ertegun and Wexler knew, they could revolutionize musicmaking and, more important, music listening. Just their luck, and their smarts, they got all three...
...GENIE Blinded at six by glaucoma, schooled in classical, gospel and every form of popular music, Charles came to Atlantic in 1953, when Ertegun bought his Swingtime Records contract for $2,500. Ray brought with him a pioneering blend of gospel melodies, R&B raunch, a suavely swingin? piano groove ? la Nat Cole and the imposing sound of a big band behind him (though typically he worked with only six sidemen). Oh, and an epochal vocal style that would make him the dominant and longest-lived soul singer of the century. Was Charles, as one of his own albums...
...Ertegun and house arranger Jesse Stone had to prod the new guy to drop the crooning (on some early recordings, like "It Should?ve Been Me" and "Greenbacks," he adopts the nasal whisper of a race tout) and get forceful. Charles also learned that he was his best composer. His first pieces were every bit as primitive as Ertegun?s, but his renditions were way more primal. On "Don?t You Know" the lyric boasts a banality worthy of Ahmet?s efforts ("Don?t you know, baby/ Child, don?t you know, baby/ Don?t you know, baby/ Little girl...
...back to basics -the 12-bar blues -in a song so uptempo and alluring, and so memorable, that it serves as the title for Ertegun?s gigantic memoir book: "What?d I Say." There was nothing revolutionary in the lyric, except its daring to be loose ("Hey, mama, doncha treat me wrong/ Come and love your daddy all night long," etc.). Nor was the notion of releasing a jazzy, largely instrumental number in two parts; the year before, Cozy Cole (whose drumming career had stretched from Jelly Roll Morton to Charlie Parker, and who had recorded a Leiber-Stoller number...