Ahmet Ertegun is dead

The 8:45 AM EST slot on “Morning Edition” is the only radio I listen to regularly–it fits in the 3 minute window between dropping my wife off at work and parking across campus in the parking ramp–but it regularly has great features that I’ve written about before.

On Friday the segment was on Ahmet Ertegun, founder of Atlantic Records and the man who signed such artists as Ray Charles, Led Zeppelin, and countless jazz and R & B musicians.  Ertegun died on Wednesday at the age of 83 (NYT obituary).

In case you didn’t know, Ertegun was a Turk.  He came to the U.S. with his father who worked as a diplomat at the Turkish embassy.  Ertegun became a huge jazz fan and held a number of concerts at the Turkish embassy featuring black and white performers on the same stage, something that couldn’t be done most other places.  (Anyone know if these embassy concerts were recorded?)

You can read a transcript of the story, but for full effect you gotta listen to it:  The Amazing Ears of the Late Ahmet Ertegun