Ahmet Ertegun

It was an environment that demanded absolute vocal discipline, providing a stern lesson in control and emotional delivery.

By 1979, her immense talent caught the attention of Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun, who signed her to a contract.

Yet the road to her debut album was not immediate.

The label initially struggled to package her booming four-octave vocal range into a marketable pop sound.

[laughs]

Um, back in the, this must have been the '80s or late '80s, early '90s, when Ahmet Ertegun was, uh, still in the mix.

Yeah.

And it was in the big ballroom there, and it was, you know, the stuff of legend with all sorts of parties up, after parties upstairs and suites, and Phil Sp- Phil Spector running amok and all sorts of stories like that.

It comes-- I believe it comes from his brother Randy.

Uh, there was a meeting between Bobby Fuller and Ahmet Ertegun in New York City.

Now, it's believed that notorious Genovese family-connected businessman Morris Levy had unofficially taken control of Delphi Records and that Levy had personally invested in Bobby in exchange for the rights to Bobby's hit song, Let Her Dance.

So if Bobby Fuller were to leave Delphi Records, the label would be done.

It was like all the majors started to get interested all of a sudden, you know? So we met with, with David Geffen.

We met with, uh, Ahmet Ertegun for Atlantic Records.

We met with Herb Alpert and, and the people at A&M.

But we met with, like, all of these, like, classic record men, you know, from, from the older generation, and, and, like, that was the coolest thing to us.

And we're walking through the studios with him, and we come around a corner, and there's his trumpet, like, sitting on a pedestal.

And he says, "Oh, yeah, that's my trumpet." And, like, he picked it up, and he played something for us, which was, like, totally surreal.

Uh, we met Ahmet Ertegun at a, a kind of a swanky Chinese restaurant uptown in New York here, and the coolest thing about all these meetings was these guys told us all these insane stories, like stories about being in the studio with The Stones, like, with big bowls of coke on the mixing desk and all this, like, debauchery going on.

Like, uh, Geffen told us stories about having to smuggle David Crosby pot across the country 'cause he was supposed to play Madison Square Garden that night with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, and his pot delivery didn't make it, and he was, like, refusing to go on.

But the A&R guy is just so important.

And we did an hour on Ahmet Ertegun, and what a life he had.

Yeah, one of my heroes.

Atlantic,

...

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, uh, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame by Ahmet Ertegun, who founded the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, you know? And, um-

Mm.

[laughs]