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December 27, 1999
Web posted at: 4:05 p.m. EST (2105 GMT)

A CNN WorldBeat Report

(CNN) -- When he founded Atlantic Records more than 50 years ago, Ahmet Ertegun was an immigrant from Turkey with a passion for music and not much cash. As he recalls it, paying $3,000 back in the mid-1950s to buy out Ray Charles' contract was an even bigger deal when put into perspective by the $10,000 investment it took to start his company.

But since then, Atlantic has launched the careers of artists including Aretha Franklin, Led Zeppelin, The Drifters and Tori Amos.

As Ertegun tells CNN's WorldBeat, he's seen a lot change in the music industry. "In 1932, when I was 9 years old, my brother took me to hear the Cab Calloway Orchestra and the Duke Ellington Orchestra when they played at the Palladium in London," he says. "My father at the time was the Turkish ambassador to the United Kingdom and after that he was made ambassador to Washington.

"But in those days in Washington, Duke Ellington couldn't play in any white theater. If he did manage to play in a white theater, there were no black people allowed in the audience."

In his career, Ertegun has brought blues appreciation to a mainstream audience, and has introduced the world to a young Eric Clapton. Through it all, he says, the art of music was itself the driving factor.

"I've had a series of different partners" in Atlantic Records, he says, "but they were all music people. We were never run by lawyers or businessmen. We were always run by people who came from the music who were involved either as producers or as composers or -- but involved in the music."