The black Atlantic 

RIP Ahmet Ertegun (1923-2006)

The terrible news came last Friday evening, courtesy of one of my dearest friends in Manhattan: Ahmet Ertegun, founding chairman of Atlantic Records, had died at the New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. He passed away after lingering in a coma for weeks as a result of a fall backstage at the Beacon Theatre during the Rolling Stones' command performance for Bill Clinton. And so I immediately scrapped the year-end opus I had been laboring on most of last week that was meant to run in this space; what do the fancies and follies of today's parade of callow pop stars matter when a real record industry giant like Ahmet Ertegun has gone to Glory? That this loss of someone I never even met should impact me so might seem strange to some. And yet I am devastated. Truly, the demise of Mr. Ertegun feels like an amputation -- this in a time when my heart is already cleft in two.

The year 2006 was, for me, the year the music died. As early as late January when we saw Terence Malick's Powhatan saga The New World -- illuminating our ancestral heritage just in time for Jamestown's 400th anniversary in 2007 -- and then my ailing mother undertook her last voyage to the Motherland (South Africa), sounds had begun to disenchant in the wake of the high point of British singer-songwriter Lewis Taylor's sole U.S. show (at New York's Bowery Ballroom). And these last six months have seen me turn recluse, inured to electric ballrooms, record fairs and such. Only the release of Gnarls Barkley's magnificent St. Elsewhere (Downtown/Atlantic), the soundtrack to my mother's fadeout in the spring, penetrated my perpetual fog.

Even if regular readers, family, friends and foes are tired of my sorrow, the immensity of the loss of my mother this past summer cannot be overstated. Yet the impact and aftereffects of this life-altering death were considerably worsened by the music world's losses, in rapid succession, of Malian master Ali Farka Touré (I lived as a child in Mali, when my mother became the third black woman Ambassador in American history, appointed to steward U.S. interests in that country of the Western Sudan); Southern rock 'n' soul legend Phil Walden Sr. (whom I vainly attempted to eulogize in this space with a paean to the leaders of the new Dixie-fried breed, Hobex and Mofro); swamp-rock cult hero Johnny Jenkins (one of Walden's artists on Capricorn Records); (my Philly acquaintance and erstwhile Atlantic artist) Rufus Harley, the world's first soul-jazz bagpiper; and one of my all-time rock 'n' roll heroes, Arthur Lee of Love, the Singing Cowboy and O.G. Pied Piper of Freak-Folk.

Arif Mardin, another Turkish émigré legendary in the 20th century music business and an intimate colleague of Ertegun's at Atlantic Records (aka The House that Ruth Built) in its early postwar heyday, died within a day of my mother, also in Manhattan, of the same brutal pancreatic cancer.

I had met Mr. Mardin and was friends with his producer/musician son, Joe. I too am acquainted with Jerry Wexler, through my Southern gentleman mentor Stanley Booth, and friends with his musician daughter, Lisa. Papa Dip Wexler has not only been influential to me as the onetime music journalist who coined the term "rhythm & blues," for helping foster the Skydog and shepherding Aretha Franklin to her greatest heights, but also for kindly regaling me with personal tales of the immortal soul icon Donny Hathaway, extolling the virtues of session legends like the late great Eric Gale, and turning me on to Dusty in Memphis and the glories of King Solomon Burke (whose latest CD, Nash8ville, was among the triumphs of the year).

I had dealings with various younger Waldens as well, throughout the 1990s while I toiled on the trail of such new wave Southern rock outfits as Gov't Mule. But, despite having never encountered the man Otis Redding called "Omlet" in the oh-so civilized flesh, I can never forget that the first person I ever knew of in the record trade was him. He was my first hero, besides my mother -- the first person outside of my immediate family of whom I have any consciousness whatsoever. And I will never forget the immeasurable contributions he made, not only to the music industry, but to American culture itself -- and that of the African Diaspora. Indeed, the sole reason to look forward to the imminent return of Black History Month in February will be to heavily rotate Atlantic recordings from Brother Ray to the Dirty South's current favorite Rev. MC, Cee-Lo (as half of Gnarls Barkley).

If we people who are darker than blue put the African in Atlantic during the centuries of our bodies and spirits' theft via pernicious Triangular Trade, then our Afro-Asiatic cousin Ahmet Ertegun ensured that the Atlantic remained black in the most crucial era of the Civil Rights Movement, which irrevocably transfigured the very Southland we live and listen upon this day.

If I were to be inappropriately facetious, I could say my first words were "Ahmet Ertegun" (although Spanish was my first language, it really is a version of the truth). Somehow, as a babe in my crib in Chocolate City, listening to the strains of Atlantic (and affiliate) recordings drifting down the hall from the trusty KLH stereo of my parents (who loved Ray Charles, who hailed from Père's hometown of Albany, Ga. aka Thronateeska; they attended grad school at Howard while Donny Hathaway studied music there), I knew that this distinct, important person existed -- "Ahmet Ertegun" -- and that somehow his odd, exotic name represented a titan of taste. Later, as a diplomatic corps brat and music fanatic myself, I thrilled that Mr. Ertegun, as the Turkish Ambassador's son in mid-century, had consummated his love for R&B on the very same D.C. streets I inhabited, that he knew the owner of our 'hood-celebrated record chain Waxie Maxie's (Max Silverman) and had gone to church at the local, (shuttered) Chitlin' Circuit stop, the Howard Theater. I identified with the suave, urbane, cultured record executive in his bespoke suits and yearned to meet and have him serve as my rabbi in the rockbiz.

It may be hard for younger readers to ken the visceral, emotional attachment music heads of my generation and older have to albums as objects -- especially since 2006 was the year when user-generated content (particularly via MySpace and YouTube) overtook physical recordings themselves. Yet my earliest memories other than pure sound are of toddling past my parents' system and nanny's console stereo, watching platters with the iconic red-and-green Atlantic label drop down the stack, emitting such strange, wonderful sounds never to be duplicated again -- above all, those from Hathaway (produced to raw perfection by Mardin and Wexler on the crate-digger classic, Donny Hathaway Live). If I was ready for revolution in my Afro and red-black-and-green diapers, it's because classic Atlantic soul sides made it sound infinitely stirring and possible.

I was a melancholy, fanciful child; one of twins and yet a loner within that duality. My father had no sons and my male cousins lived far enough away in southwest Georgia so that I had the full benefit of his sonic sermonizing. More to the point, I had no boys to compete with for stereo time nor to mock and dismiss my fascination with music and its related biniss. So, then as now, the albums in the flat were my friends, their liner notes my gospel. And early on I knew the great significance of the powerful, erudite, sound-obsessed men who orbited Atlantic Records and its satellites Atco, Cotillion, Stax/Volt/Ardent, Capricorn: Ertegun, Mardin, Wexler, Tom Dowd, Nesuhi Ertegun, Phil Walden, Joel Dorn and Jim Stewart. These legends' very names were akin to music, and they (plus their concert-related associates, promoter/manager Bill Graham and live sound guru Wally Heider) were my personal superheroes in the manner that Huey and Superman were to the youngbloods on the playground.

As ancient Kemetic civilization is to the world, Atlantic Records is to my private universe. Although Brer Booth has been the most important influence on me as a southern raconteur, I never aspired to rockcrit; I always secretly nursed the romance of becoming an A&R executive because of the class and example of the Erteguns, Mardin and Wexler (I hadn't even heard of colored Columbia producer Tom Wilson yet and most of the great black independent labels had gone the way of race records by the early '70s, yet Ertegun definitely didn't seem white, making the impossible seem possible -- now, gender issues are another story). Simultaneously, my abiding passion for Southern rock and soul was triggered largely by Wexler's association with Stax and Dowd's miracle working at famed studios in Memphis, Miami and northwest Alabama. Out of the Atlantic fount came my love for the Allman Brothers Band, the Buffalo Springfield, peerless Hathaway and Roberta Flack duets, CSNY, Eugene McDaniels (whose 1971 hip-folk masterpiece that raised Nixon's ire, Headless Heroes of the Apocalypse, was reissued in March), Manassas, John Coltrane, David Crosby's solo masterpiece If I Could Only Remember My Name ... (re-released by Rhino this fall), Big Star and Jim Dickinson, the Mule (for whom I wrote liner notes) and so much more; the label's existence reflected and nurtured my love for soul, country-rock, bluegrass, jazz and, very belatedly, metal (via Led Zeppelin). And dontcha know that Capricorn Grail Eric Quincy Tate was delivered from the misty vaults of time this season by Rhino Handmade?

The very marrow of my biracial, hybrid dream of Southern transcendence rests with Walden's symbiotic management of Redding, as well as his label Capricorn and its flagship act, the Allmans (Jaimoe saved my life twice -- once metafizzik-ly, once literally). I would not have devoted my career to supporting the 1990's rebirth of Southern rock nor new South culture without the shining beacon of Atlantic; I'd have never come to Charlotte. What would the world look like without Atlantic's revolutionary North-South quid pro quo or the East-West aesthetic it engendered?

Inasmuch as any of my dreams came true via music, Atlantic was the architect, shaman and vehicle of fortune.

In the future, my existence will echo one of my favorite Frida Kahlo paintings: call me The Two Kandias. The first, the daughter of Anne and Ahmet in love with wax long-players and perpetually in thrall to sound, will never come again. The second, born on New Year's Day 2007, will linger on in a half-life, with complex polyrhythms of creolized African bluenotes falling on her ears like ash.

Atlantic Records made me and my whole world. Conversely, it doomed all of my personal relationships; it's been a lifelong struggle to love anyone more than "Bluebird," "In Memory Of Elizabeth Reed," "Someday We'll All Be Free," "Tighten Up" and that supernatural wonder in Neil Young's "Country Girl," when Graham Nash's voice kisses Olorun's cosmos. (Now, add "The Last Time.")

And yet Atlantic rescued my African redbone self from the aftershocks of Manifest Destiny. Certainly, the vital necessity of releasing the Allmans' Live at Fillmore East (Dowd's shining star) became clear at year's end when the music stopped, and I sat alone in the dark witnessing Apocalypto as '06 redskin bookend, Jaguar Paw knee-deep in blues and running for his life on the eve of Columbus' dance across the big water. Without my mother and other heroes, I now know the sound of Apocalypse.

The label's back catalog is how I understood the Jim Crow world of my parents and the souls of black folk in mid-century. Here's hoping that birthright blessing can never be undone. And so, next Monday morning, when I perform my annual ritual of spinning Hathaway's exhilarating, exquisite holiday classic, "This Christmas" (originally released on the Soul Christmas compilation, Atco 33-269/November 1968), I will also pour libation for Ahmet Ertegun and all of those who've returned this year to Afrolantica's regenerative, watery embrace.