The Last Sultan: The Life and Times of Ahmet Ertegun
By Robert Greenfield
I went through a phase at the end of 2023 where I started exploring music industry executive biographies. I’ve read several artist autobiographies, but had never really dug into the lives of the people who built the industry we operate in today.
I started with The Operator by Tom King (surprisingly hard to find, hence the Amazon link instead of my usual Bookshop.org) to learn about the rise of David Geffen - possibly the first multi-media mogul. I simultaneously dug into The Soundtrack of My Life, the autobiography of Clive Davis, founder of Arista records and likely the most successful A&R and overall music industry executive of the our lifetime.
One name continually came up in both of those books. It’s a name I know but didn’t know too much about. I had seen him portrayed in film - most notably by Curtis Armstrong in Ray - and I knew he was the founder of Atlantic Records, but did not know the history.
This lead me to pick up the book, The Last Sultan, and finally learn about the life of Ahmet Ertegun.
It’s a fascinating and entertaining book, that is written in a primarily journalistic style with well-researched quotes and references, but full of entertaining stories and interactions with the greats of Jazz as well as the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. As usual, I’m not giving a full review here, but will highlight why I think this book is important for an overall education in how the music industry functions, while some other books get “honorable mention.”
I was standing in front of my class at USC and had a revelation. We all talk about the pros and cons of the label system and tension between artists and their labels - especially the majors. In a room full of 11 students all focused on learning about the music industry, not one of them could tell me how or why the major label system came to be.
Ahmet lived that history. He was part of building that history. For Ahmet, in his early career, finding an artist to record might have meant going to a Jazz club or Blues bar and finding a musician who would never be able to afford five minutes in a recording studio. Later in his career he had complex contracts with Ray Charles and stadium filling rock bands. It was an era when labels owned the scouting, recording, marketing, and promotion of all recorded music.
Flash forward to now, many developing artists can make a whole album on their computer and don’t even need five minutes in that recording studio. Many of the systems we operate under now, were built in a time when labels served a different function. Ahmet Ertegun’s life follows and highlights that process and shows us why things are the way they are.
Ahmet was a true music lover and even after he was very wealthy would prefer to go to a club and hear great Jazz than sit in a luxury box in a theater. He was a true A&R, talent scout, and executive with a fascinating life and I think anyone who is interested in working in recorded music now would benefit from understanding where this all started, so The Last Sultan is a great way to learn a big part of the narrative.