What'd I Say

Inspired at an early age by music, cutting his first records aged 14, Ahmet Ertegun, son of the Turkish ambassador to Paris, London and then Washington, formed Atlantic Records over 50 years ago and still runs it today. His love and passion for music is as strong and clear now as it ever has been. It would have been a relatively easy matter where this book is concerned to have created 'boxes' and put soul into one of these, jazz into another and so on. We've chosen instead to let the story unfold through 1,200 exceptional images taken by a range of the world's greatest photographers, and a text of approximately 120,000 words from Ahmet, the artists and the characters concerned. Furthermore, each of the writers listed below have provided definitive essays on the relevant eras, styles and themes of music involved.