My father believed very strongly in Ataturk. Ataturk was a very powerful man and a man of great vision.
AHMET ERTEGUNThere are still many great surviving talents: Stevie Winwood. Another great talent is Stevie Wonder.
More Ahmet Ertegun Quotes
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You know you have a multimillion-seller hit – and what you’re working on suddenly has magic.
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My father was a very religious person. And he prayed five times a day. And he did that throughout his relationship with Ataturk.
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I used to drink a bottle of vodka a day, every day, for about 40 years and it never occurred to me it’d kill me.
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Another one is Eric Clapton. Another one is Phil Collins. Eminem, Kanye West I like all those people.
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The songwriters whom we think of being the greatest songwriters usually write one hit and six or seven flops.
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I first heard Laura Branigan sing live in my brother Nesuhi’s apartment, where we had gone because he had a very good piano. I immediately realized that she had a great pop voice, in the classical sense.
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There’s been so much bad blood between the Kurds and the Turks.
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The Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame will provide a center where the lives and the artistry of the greatest jazz musicians will be celebrated, and where people will come to learn about jazz, something to which my brother devoted his lifes work.
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People like Clyde McPhatter who came out of the black churches – like Sam Cooke and Aretha Franklin – were all church singers who became great pop singers because gospel singing is very close to the blues.
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Ataturk saw where history was going. He really did in Turkey what we are all hoping somebody will do in [Islamic] countries where fundamentalists thrive, that they get somebody today that has the vision that Ataturk had in 1915.
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My first wife was a theater person.
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I came close to signing Elvis Presley. I offered $25,000 for his contract and they asked for $45,000 and I just didn’t have the other $20,000.
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I became a jazz fan quite early and never went off the path thereafter.
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At a time when it was very brave to do because Ataturk was cutting off the heads of the imams. And people thought that that was foolhardy of my father.
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Whenever a songwriter writes a big hit, then the next 20 songs they write – no matter how bad they are – get recorded.
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