![]() ![]() The first Atlantic office, was in the now defunct Jefferson hotel. It is out of this kind of atmosphere that traditions are challenged, rules are broken, and new music is generated. First and foremost, we were having great fun, and never imagined we would be able to make a living doing what we loved most. We wanted to make the kind of records we wanted to buy. "When Herb Abramson, another music buff, and I decided to start Atlantic Records in 1947," Ertegun recalls. Their first records, jazz sides by Tiny Grimes and Errol Garner, came out in 1948. He and Abramson set up shop as Atlantic in the latter part of 1947. Through college, Ertegun, son of the Turkish Ambassador to the United States, supplemented his allowance by making and selling records. "We have a big nut," Ertegun boils down the situation at Atlantic today, "and we need to have those hits all the time." Atlantic has grown by keeping the things that work but recognizing what was needed for growth. These days, business is a bit more involved. For the first two years, it was all touch and go, and thereafter, the company grew a lot, because we got a large roster of good artists." "In those days," Ertegun adds, "you hoped that something would sell enough to keep the doors open. I remember every week Ahmet and I and Muriel Matenson then, we used to sit with a little hand crank adding machine and figure out if we'd survived that week." We were three active partners and one silent partner and we all drove big cars, had Diner Club Cards and got decent salaries, so we were enjoying the prerequisites of management instantly, and in order to do that we had to sell those 60,000 singles a month. "We used to have to sell 60,000 singles a month to meet the nut," a bemused Jerry Wexler recalled of his early days as a general partner in Atlantic, circa 1953, for Record WorldMagazine in 1972, "which was pretty extensive. You found the music, you found the money to make the records, and then the other people tried to get paid for selling these records." I remember, my parents used to say, 'What are you talking about, "the music business"? What is the music business?' It wasn't really a business. I worked for King Records, which was a competitor of Atlantic Records. "So many people were not doing things, and it left these big, gaping holes. "The late 50s were a time of great opportunity," Elektra Records President Bob Krasnow noted at last year's New Music Seminar. So much the paradigm of the post WWII growth of the music business, Charlie Gillett used them for his model in his chronicle, Making Tracks. In the nearly 45 years since Ertegun and his original partner Herb Abramson first got together with this idea (and $10,000 from Ertegun's dentist), Atlantic has become one of the most consistently successful companies in music. ![]() "WHEN I FIRST started Atlantic Records," reflects the label founder, Ahmet Ertegun, "I intended to make good blues and jazz music, as well as some pop music. ![]()
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