New York's 234 West 56th Street is one of the most remarkable addresses in popular music. On the top floor, above Patsy's Italian Restaurant, is the former office of Atlantic Records where Ahmet Ertegun had one desk and Jerry Wexler had another. When the musicians arrived, the desks were pushed to the wall, the microphones were set up and artists such as Ray Charles did the rest. And apart from that one time when Brother Ray and his drug habit locked themselves in the bathroom, things usually went very well indeed.
Atlantic Records was founded in 1947 by Ertegun, Herb Abramson and his wife Miriam - all jazz fans eager to do something serious with their hobby. Ertegun was the suave, multi-lingual son of a former Turkish ambassador and he knew more about American music than most Americans. He also had the right connections and somehow managed to extract $10,000 in seed money from Dr Vadhi Sabit, the family dentist.
There was much initial floundering, but eventually the first hit arrived with Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee - a blues number recorded by Granville "Stick" McGhee, who happened to be the brother of Brownie McGhee. Ruth Brown was next, and over the next five years Atlantic recorded many major rhythm and blues acts including Big Joe Turner, Ivory Joe Hunter and, most notably, Ray Charles. In fact, $3,000 of that dentist's money was spent on buying out his contract.
Ertegun was certainly no ordinary record-company executive. He knew exactly what he wanted and even wrote some of the material under the alias of Nugetre (his surname backwards). He penned Don't You Know I Love You? for the Clovers, Don't Play That Song for Ben E. King and Mess Around for Ray Charles - even recording his own vocal in a Times Square booth to show Charles exactly how he wanted it sung.
It was an attitude which made for as much potential friction as it did for success. The Clovers, for instance, hated that hit song he had written for them - but they did it anyway. Ruth Brown, the Doris Day fan, had certainly never intended to be such a belter. And Ray Charles, who really wanted to be a cross between Charles Brown and Nat Cole. And so Ertegun would cajole and sometimes insist. He was usually right.
The larger record companies quickly saw what was happening and soon countered with their own (white) versions of what Atlantic was perfecting. The ludicrous Crew Cuts copied the Chords' joyful Sh'boom, Bill Haley cut Joe Turner's Shake Rattle and Roll and Georgia Gibbs attempted her own version of La Vern Baker - a racket certainly, but typical music business stuff. In fact, Tom Dowd, Atlantic's engineer, worked both sides - skipping over to Mercury Records as a freelancer to work on the squeaky-clean copy of his own, more believable original.
Only the new talent of Elvis Presley seemed to get things right and Atlantic immediately offered $25,000 to buy him out. The Colonel, however, wanted $45,000 and so the King went elsewhere, much to Ertegun and Wexler's annoyance. The effect of such a serious loss was that it suddenly made Atlantic realise that, if it was to compete, it had to get into the white market in a big way. They signed Bobby Darin.
So began Atlantic's relationship with such white acts as Sonny and Cher, Dusty Springfield, Buffalo Springfield, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Genesis and so on. Although it was mega-selling white rock stars who would make Ertegun a very rich man, the 1960s and 1970s was also an important time for black music on the label - particularly when Jerry Wexler began to look around for some extra ingredients. Hearing what he was looking for in the sound of Booker T and the MGs, Wexler got Atlantic to set up a recording and distribution deal with a small down-home label in Memphis called Stax. The result was the work of Carla Thomas, Sam and Dave, Otis Redding and many more of the true legends of soul. And when those glory days ended, Wexler took Atlantic to Alabama to merge musically with the Muscle Shoals rhythm section. The spectacular result of that inspired piece of production was Aretha Franklin and her first big hit, I've Never Loved A Man (The Way That I Love You).
It was all impressive stuff and, meanwhile, Ertegun's brother, Neshui, who had joined the label to develop a jazz list, was presiding over a roster that included John Coltrane, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Ornette Coleman and Charles Mingus.
Like the r 'n' b roster, it amounted to a huge list of yet more legendary names - all of whom feature in an equally huge new book called What'd I Say - The Atlantic Story: 50 Years of Music. In fact, it is so big it's not so much a coffee-table book as an actual coffee table - a glossy scrapbook of superb photographs, supported by the thoughts of chairman Ertegun himself.
Enjoy it, certainly, and savour the pictures, but beware the depression that will surely descend as you flick into the second half of this amazing story. Here you will discover in full shining colour that music, even at Atlantic Records, is not quite what it used to be. Not so much What'd I Say? as "Where'd It All Go Wrong?".
What'd I Say - The Atlantic Story: 50 Years of Music by Ahmet Ertegun is published by Orion