Ahmet Ertegun dies
NEW YORK – Ahmet Ertegun, who helped define American music as the founder of Atlantic Records, a label that popularized the gritty R&B of Ray Charles, the classic soul of Aretha Franklin and the British rock of the Rolling Stones, died Thursday at 83, his spokesman said.
It is impossible to overstate Ertegun’s influence and importance to the development of all forms of popular music. Read the credits on most classic jazz, R+B and rock from the ’50s onward, and his name will appear more often than not.
And did he lose interest as he aged? Hell no. He died from injuries sustained from a fall- at a Stones concert in October! Rock on sir.
