Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler and Big Joe Turner

This is the first of two posts on Atlantic records. It includes a downloadable mix of five songs (right click to download)

• You Went Back on Your Word- Clyde McPhatter
• Cry to Me-Solomon Burke
• Fool Fool Fool- Clovers
• Down in the Alley-Clovers
• Crawdad Hole-Big Joe Turner

You Went Back on Your Word, Cry to Me, Fool Fool Fool, Down in the Alley, Crawdad Hole

I just finished reading an autobiography by Jerry Wexler and David Ritz, Rhythm and the Blues: A Life in Music. Jerry Wexler, along with Ahmet Ertegun was the management of Atlantic Records: he was the salty one, Ertegun the butter. Choleric, an autodidact, smart, hip, competitive and very very very focused, Wexler did the day to day while Ertegun made people happy or at least comfortable. When David Geffen came to ask that Stephen Stills be released from his Atlantic contract so that he could be in Crosby Stills and Nash, Wexler was apoplectic, stormed and shouted and sent him away. This being David Geffen, he went to Ertegun who, rather than keep Stephen Stills from doing what he wanted to do, talked Geffen into bringing Crosby Stills and Nash to Atlantic. Wexler came to work early and was always on the phone: Ertegun was usually out somewhere doing something glamorous.

Names? Wexler was producer for the Drifters, Clyde McPhatter, Ray Charles, the Clovers, Big Joe Turner, Chuck Willis, Solomon Burke and Bobby Darin in the ‘before the Beatles’ period.

He saw talent not so much as stars as musicians, each with their special qualities and talents. One of Wexler’s talents was knowing which musicians went together and being able to put together a studio band that would bring out the best in the lead talent. And Atlantic did not chase the teen market, they imagined their audience as adult blacks. This led to Ray Charles, certainly, but also to hits like “Down in the Alley” by the Clovers (with an opening riff Wexler says they took from Elmore James—dig it). You know, cross-overs. This stood them in good stead when the bigs moved in on the youth market in the late fifties: most indies folded, Atlantic hung on…and they brought in Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller as contract producers to give them a string of teen hits with groups like the Coasters (Charlie Brown-not included).

Wexler and Ertegun were good at the business of running an independent R&B label in the fifties and sixties, which was not the kind of thing you learned to do at Wharton. They were unique because they used basic good business practices: they had an excellent product (not only great talent, but good tech too: Tom Dowd (hello cousin!) was their engineer, they recorded on Ampeg #3, the third eight track recorder in existence and miced the rhythm instruments separately so they could mix for clarity and bass), paid fairly (a relative term in the fifties, but paid fair royalties and, as Ertegun told a doo wop group deciding who to record for, “Yes they’ll offer more but we’ll actually pay you”) and they took care of service, following up on payments to DJs and record jobbers who were the infantry of publicity and record distribution at that time.

They also offered a great track record, music knowledge and a sophistication the others couldn’t match. And they knew when to get out of the way: they produced Ray Charles, but it was Ray that really taught Wexler how to hear and produce. And while they loved the music inordinately, a minority position among fifties R&B record producers, they were in a business where they hoped to (and did) make a lot of money.