The songwriters whom we think of being the greatest songwriters usually write one hit and six or seven flops.
AHMET ERTEGUNEverybody at Atlantic knew that we had a winner in this young lady, and she came through with great hits that will be remembered for many years to come.
More Ahmet Ertegun Quotes
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If I’d have continued it might have killed me. My doctor said I should stick to wine.
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The main thing is that Ataturk saw the desperate condition of the countries that had not had an industrial revolution.
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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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I’ve been in the studio when you go through a track and you run down a track and you know even before the singer starts singing, you know the track is swinging.
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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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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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You know you have a multimillion-seller hit – and what you’re working on suddenly has magic.
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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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A singer’s biographical film should have their music and their voice.
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I should have gotten the Beatles. But one of my lawyers kind of messed up.
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My first wife was a theater person.
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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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The first time I heard Clyde McPhatter singing with the Dominoes at the Apollo I just fell off my chair
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Everybody at Atlantic knew that we had a winner in this young lady, and she came through with great hits that will be remembered for many years to come.
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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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