Ahmet Ertegun, the canny, passionate and impulsive co-founder of Atlantic Records, exerted a sweeping influence on postwar US popular music.

Atlantic became the leading R&B and soul recording label in the US, and artists such as Ruth Brown, Ray Charles, B. B. King, Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Crosby Stills Nash and Young, John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, and Sonny and Cher were just a few of the musicians Ertegun worked with, wrote for, produced, recorded and paid.

His colleague Jerry Wexler described Ertegun’s life as “a brew of rock stars, diplomats, financiers, movie stars, and avant-garde artists”. In a typical episode Ertegun once found himself sitting on the office sofa at a party to celebrate an anniversary of Atlantic Records, between two guests who had never met. With perfect aplomb he introduced Henry Kissinger and Wilson Pickett, who threw a high five.

Ahmet Ertegun was born in Istanbul in 1923. His father, Münir Ertegün, a lawyer and legal adviser to Kemal Atatürk, was dispatched to the diplomatic purlieus of Switzerland, France and England. Thus Ahmet and his elder brother, Nesuhi, found themselves at the London Palladium in 1934 and being enthralled by Duke Ellington.

As Ertegun recalled: “This was my first encounter with black people, and I was overwhelmed by the elegance of their tuxedos, their gleaming instruments, and their sense of style. But mostly it was the music. I was accustomed to the sound of scratchy phonograph records, so to hear the purity and power of that orchestra in a live setting was overwhelming. I fell under the spell of black music. A new world opened up for me.”

The passion for American music became all the easier to pursue when Ertegun’s father was posted to Washington as the Turkish Ambassador. He and his brother — already fluent in three languages — were able to invite mixed-race gatherings of musicians to the embassy to perform and eat in a way that was well-nigh impossible in the rest of the capital. They scoured the shops for records and they were already noted collectors while still in their teens.

Ertegun studied at St John’s College, Annapolis, and Georgetown University and was contemplating post-graduate study when his father died in 1944. His mother and sister returned to Turkey, but the brothers stayed in the US. Nesuhi moved to Los Angeles, where he taught jazz studies at the University of Southern California, and Ahmet moved to Manhattan where he decided to start a record label.

With Herb Abramson, a dentist who had forsaken his profession for his love of the blues, and a $10,000 loan from another dentist, Vahdi Sabit, he set up Atlantic Records in 1947. Its first office, in the less than prepossessing Hotel Jefferson, doubled as Ertegun’s sleeping quarters. Its next premises doubled as a studio.

From the beginning Ertegun was keen that the catalogue should be eclectic. When he heard that his brother’s services were being sought by the Imperial label, Ertegun insisted that Nesuhi return to the East Coast, and jazz — in the shape of Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Coltrane and the Modern Jazz Quartet among many others — would be one of Atlantic’s many strengths.

That was in the future, but the fledgeling label of October 1947 was hard-pressed to find something that would sell until Ertegun came across Stick McGee’s song Drinkin’ Wine Spo-dee-o-dee. He persuaded Stick to have another shot at the song — which promptly sold 400,000 copies and gave Atlantic its first hit.

From the outset the label made waves by offering its artists royalties, but Ertegun was hardly prepared for the push-and-shove, and the payments to radio stations, that were the industry’s modus operandi. But soon his list of songs and performers was so strong that it had an impetus of its own. It had a considerable boost from the hits of Ruth Brown (obituary November 20, 2006).

Though Ertegun liked to describe himself as given to “indolence and excess” he spent hours attending cabarets where he found such of his performers as Mabel Mercer, Chris Connor and Bobby Short, or scouring the South, where he recorded the likes of Professor Longhair and Blind Willie McTell.

The atmosphere at Atlantic Records engendered creativity. Before joining it in 1952 Ray Charles had looked set to be a mere echo of Nat King Cole — and after leaving the label in the early Sixties he was never to achieve the same intensity that he did on those jazz and R&B recordings that culminated in the infectious What’d I Say. During one recording session Charles heard that his mother had died. Instead of calling off the session he gave that rousing performance of Mess Around, a song by Ertegun himself, adapted from Cow Cow Davenport’s Cow Cow Blues.