originally appeared on billboard.com

by Gary Graff, Detroit

The death of Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun in December put the kabosh on a new Honeydrippers album Robert Plant planned to record this year. ||Continue reading||

originally appeared on billboard.com

by Gary Graff, Detroit

The death of Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun in December put the kabosh on a new Honeydrippers album Robert Plant planned to record this year. ||Continue reading||

originally appeared on RollingStone.com

by Robert Plant

Atlantic was a very classy label — very metropolitan, even though it was synonymous with black music. And Ahmet himself was like that, gifted beyond all belief — the way he moved from his origins, pushing against the grain into the bohemia of Stick McGhee and Joe Turner.

I must have first met him on Led Zeppelin’s first U.S. tour. But I don’t think it was our early success that interested him. We came here running so fast — and he liked that. But Ahmet found the craziness stimulating. And he was a great contributor to it as well. Ahmet was always backstage, with an entourage of folk, this melange of people from all walks of life. He’d have Henry Kissinger or a princess from some deposed royal family from Eastern Europe.

Ahmet was so bright and always looking for the next move. He told me years ago, “I gotta buy the company back.” And I said, “You do. You gotta get it back quick.” But had he got it back, who knows? You can’t keep abreast of the way things have gone. You have to be part of the next generation. He had already managed to do that through three generations, which is phenomenal.