In 1978, George W. S. Trow wrote about Ahmet Ertegun, the co-founder of Atlantic Records, who during his long career worked with Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, and many more.
“arranged”) is without doubt the classic black music of the nineteen-sixties. In the nineteen-fifties, this trend was for a few important years in the hands of Atlantic Records.
1953: In this year, Ahmet and Abramson produced “Mama, He Treats Your Daughter Mean,” by Ruth Brown . This song can supply some meaning to the phrase “rhythm and blues.” The phrase “rhythm and blues” was invented by Ahmet’s partner Jerry Wexler, in 1949 , to replace the word “race” as the formula descriptive of the black music then current.
1959: On June 8, 1959, Atlantic released “What’d I Say?” by Ray Charles. From the release of this record, it is possible to date the end of the period of experimentation in rhythm and blues which began for Atlantic ten years before with the release of “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee.” By 1959, Ray Charles was producing his own records, and they were as significant and powerful and pleasing as any records being made.
A boy who looked about thirteen passed around a joint. Ahmet nodded politely and passed it along. Mica kept her eyes on the stage. Onstage, Mick Jagger, wearing a white suit trimmed with a red sash, began to sing “Street Fighting Man.” To his left stood a black man. The black man held a silver bowl full of rose petals. At moments when emphasis was wanted, Mick Jagger grabbed a handful of rose petals from the silver bowl and threw them over the edge of the stage.
Andy Warhol sat at a table covered with green felt. He had a Polaroid camera with him. A giant cake was brought in. A young black woman wearing rhinestone tassels popped out of this cake. She took off her rhinestone tassels one at a time. People stood on their chairs to see this. Someone asked Ahmet where he had found this young woman. “Andy Warhol found her,” he said. “She was in ‘Trash.’ Her name is Gerry. Gerry something.
Lee Radziwill took a Polaroid picture of Mick Jagger. She asked Andy Warhol how his pictures had come out. “Oh, I’ve missed everyone,” Andy Warhol said. “I got Count Basie, and I got Dylan, but Dylan stuck together and I’ll never get it apart.” Entry in a diary: Went to see Ruth Brown, Club Baby Grand, on 125th Street. Club Baby Grand has outline of baby-grand piano inset in street front. The old fun. Cocktail glasses. Stemmed glasses flaring into a wide triangle. Not a bit of irony. Symbols of elegance, a good smooth time. Cocktail glasses reappearing downtown, overlaid with irony. Cocktail glasses held in hands of eighteen-year-old girls with blood-red nails and an edge of irony. The new fun. In the door at the Club Baby Grand.
The party for Bette Midler was held at a place called the Café Russe—then the tenant of a bad-luck property in the East Fifties where restaurants and night clubs came and went. At the Café Russe, Mick Jagger was the main attraction. People crowded around him in an alarming way. Bette Midler was in the back of the room, receiving people. There was a crowd around her, too. Soon enough, Ahmet and his guests were back outside by the limousines.