IN MEMORIAM: LES PAUL 1915 – 2009

THE WIZARD OF WAUKESHA
By Dave Tianen
reprinted with permission from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

New York – For decades, arthritis has slowly devoured the talent in Les Paul’s hands.

The right essentially has become a stiff claw. The ring and pinkie are all that is usable on the left, and arthritis is eating away at them.

The right arm is mangled too, permanently bent at a 90 degree angle from a car wreck in 1948. There are seven screws in the arm, and the tendon in the elbow is shot.

Yet he continues to play.

Every Monday night, the great guitarist carries his 92-year-old body and his 44-year-old Gibson onstage at the Iridium Jazz Club at 51st and Broadway. Still introduced as “The Wizard of Waukesha,” he does two shows – one at 8, one at 10 – in the basement nightclub.

Both are packed. Always.

Many, perhaps most, in the crowd weren’t even born in the early ’50s when Paul and his wife Mary Ford were major stars on TV and radio, topping the charts with a succession of hits: “Tennessee Waltz,” “Mockin’ Bird Hill,” “How High the Moon,” “Tiger Rag” and “Vaya Con Dios.”

That music helped define an era, but Paul ignores most of it now, opting instead for the standards he played during his jazz days in the ’30s and ’40s. It matters little.

Paul is that rare case where legend trumps celebrity. His last top 10 hit was in 1955, and he’s rarely seen on TV. But his great legacy has been blending the talent of a gifted musician with the skills of an inventor and engineer.

Influenced by the great gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt, Paul was one of the best and earliest electric guitarists. Along with a handful of players like George Barnes, Merle Travis and Charlie Christian, he changed the sound of popular music. And if Paul didn’t actually invent the solid body electric guitar (a fiction which he happily tolerates), he was a pioneer in its evolution, and he did more than anyone to popularize what would become the dominant instrumental voice of contemporary music.

His influence can be heard on almost every song on the radio, and musicians honor him with near reverence. Certainly no other Wisconsin musician approaches his impact on not just music, but popular culture.

Obsession with sound

A notorious fussbudget about sound, Paul arrives at the Iridium from his home in Mahwah, N.J., at 4:15 p.m., nearly four hours before his first show, so he has time to fine-tune the sound system. He is joined by his son and sound man Rusty, who lives with him, and another sound man. Since moving to its new locale at 1650 Broadway, the club has gone to great lengths to meet Paul’s demands.

“He made us change the whole sound system” club owner Irving Sturm cheerfully grumps. “We upgraded to like a $45,000 sound system, a Meyer sound system, because he is such a perfectionist. We did it, luckily for us, and the music has been very, very good. He’s a pain in the butt, a terrible perfectionist, he’s always bitching about something, but he’s always right.”

Of course, sound and its replication are a central part of the Les Paul saga. He is acknowledged as a father of multitrack recording, overdubbing and the electronic reverb effect. Multitrack recording had intrigued Paul since he experimented as a kid with poking extra holes in the sheets for his mom’s player piano.

In 1946, a gentleman named Colonel Dick Ranger approached Paul with a captured German tape recorder. Paul knew that Bing Crosby (whom Paul backed on a No. 1 hit in 1945) had been looking for recording techniques that would allow him to record at home. With financing from Crosby, and with the German prototype in hand, the Ampex Co. started making tape recorders.

Working in his own garage studio, Paul started to layer his own recordings. In 1947, he released a recording of the Rodgers and Hart standard “Lover” with eight guitars layered over each other. When “Lover” became a hit, he repeated the process and made a second hit, “Brazil.” Eventually, overdubbing became standard on his recordings.

It’s arguable that Paul’s impact on recording is as great as his impact on the evolution of guitars.

“I got a letter from Sinatra,” he says. “It’s a wonderful letter. I don’t remember the exact words, but he says if it wasn’t for you, I’d still be recording my first song. It was the multitrack recording he meant. Paul McCartney said the same thing: ‘I don’t care how much guitar you played, I don’t care how many hits you had, you invented that multitrack recording, and that made the difference.’ ”

Humble beginnings

Although he was a professional musician even as a child, Paul didn’t start out as a guitarist. Lester William Polfuss was born June 9, 1915, on North St. in Waukesha. The Polfuss family lived in an apartment adjoining the automobile garage Les’ dad operated. At age 8, Les was given an old harmonica by a construction worker, and within a year he was good enough to play in school talent contests.

When he was 9, his mother arranged for him to take piano lessons from a local woman who taught in her home. According to Mary Alice Shaughnessy, his biographer, after several lessons Les was sent home with a note that said: “Dear Mrs. Polfuss, your boy Lester will never learn music, so save your money. Please don’t send him for any more lessons.”

By the time he was 12, Les was making as much as $30 a week just playing for tips on the streets of Waukesha. About this time, Shaughnessy writes, Les acquired his first guitar, a $5 purchase earned by picking potato bugs off a local patch.

He also acquired a fascination with a regular on Chicago’s WLS Saturday Night Barn Dance called Pie Plant Pete. These were the early days of radio when live in-studio performers carried the programming load. Les idolized Pie Plant Pete, copied his sailor dress and even went to see him when the WLS troupe visited a Waukesha theater. Pete showed his fan some simple guitar chords and lighted a flame that continues to burn over seven decades later.

By the time he was 13, Shaughnessy relates, Les was a regular at local service clubs, talent shows and the Thursday night concerts at Waukesha’s Cutler Park band shell. At 17, going by the name Red Hot Red in reference to his hair color, he got an invitation to join Rube Tronson’s Cowboys, a regional country band. Within the year, Les had quit high school and become a full-time pro.

Through the 1930s, he followed one radio gig after another, moving to St. Louis and then to Chicago, migrating from his hillbilly roots to jazz and pop, and changing his stage name, first to Rhubarb Red and then to Les Paul. His big national break came in 1939 when, at age 24, he landed a job in New York with Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians, a big name band with a national radio show.

Developing ‘The Log’

Along the way, he kept tinkering with his instrument.

Hollow body electric guitars were being developed and commercially manufactured as early as the 1920s, but they were prone to distortion when amplified. When he was still in his Waukesha band shell days, Paul often found his acoustic guitar drowned out in a band.

He started experimenting with different ways to amplify the guitar. One experiment was to fill his hollow body guitar with plaster of Paris; it cut distortion but left him with a very, very heavy instrument. He apparently also tried mounting strings on an old railroad tie.

“He was an early innovator,” says Alan di Perna, West Coast editor for Guitar World. “There were other people who were technical innovators, but they didn’t play like Les did.”

By 1941, still only 26, Paul had fashioned a workable solid body guitar he dubbed The Log, since it was essentially a four-by-four block of solid pine with a tailpiece, two pickups and a Gibson neck mounted on it. Later, for appearances, he fixed two side wings from an Epiphone guitar so it would actually resemble a guitar.When he approached Gibson Guitars about the commercial potential of The Log, Shaughnessy reports, they told him it was “nothing but a broomstick with a pickup on it.”

By the early ’50s, Gibson started to revise its view of solid body electric guitars. A California engineer named Leo Fender had introduced a commercial solid body electric guitar, and Gibson didn’t want to get left behind. Their design department quickly put together its own version, and went to Paul seeking his endorsement.

So it was that in 1952, the Les Paul Guitar arrived, although Paul himself had contributed only minor elements to its design. The endorsement deal made him wealthy, and the brand name made him a legend.

Shaughnessy says: “Gibson made extraordinary guitars. That is why Les’ name lives on. It is not because of the four years of hit making. The reason he’s going to live long past his musical contributions is because of this extraordinary guitar that bears his name.”

As for The Log, it’s now in the collection of the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Retirement and rebirth

During World War II, Paul was drafted into the Army, where he became a regular player for the Armed Forces Radio Service, or AFRS. Paul served his country living at home in Hollywood and playing on the radio with the biggest names of the day. After leaving the Army, he hooked up with the biggest recording act in the world – Bing Crosby – and in 1945, he and his trio scored their first No. 1 hit, backing Crosby on “It’s Been a Long Long Time.” Other hits followed. In the late ’40s, Paul linked up with a sweet-voiced backup singer for Gene Autry named Colleen Summers. Paul renamed her Mary Ford, and she became his professional partner. In 1949, he split with his first wife, Virginia Webb Paul, (the couple had two sons, Rusty and Gene) and married Ford on Dec. 29 of that year in the Milwaukee County Courthouse. At the time, the couple was in town for an extended engagement at a club called Fazio’s.

The couple eventually adopted a daughter, Colleen, and had a son of their own, Robert.

By the early ’50s, Les Paul and Mary Ford were one of the biggest acts in the music business, with a TV show, a radio show and a string of hit records. In the mid-1950s, though, the country’s taste in music changed almost overnight. Paul and Ford had one last top 10 hit, “Hummingbird,” in 1955.

Then rock ‘n’ rollers crushed his career with the very instrument he’d given them.

As his and Ford’s professional lives nose-dived, their marriage frayed as well. They were divorced in 1964.

On top of everything else, health was becoming an issue.

“The main reason I retired was because I injured this arm, this finger. I had surgery on it in ‘61. That was the beginning of my hand problems,” Paul says. Other health issues piled on top of the arthritis. In 1969, a friend playfully cuffed him on the head and broke his right eardrum. Three operations followed, but there was permanent hearing loss.

There was one bright spot: In the late ’70s, he made a Grammy-winning comeback with fellow guitar legend Chet Atkins on the album “Chester and Lester.” Then came more health problems. There was a heart attack followed by bypass surgery.

“Then came a funny thing. The doctor called me in his office,” Paul recalls. “He said, ‘I want you to promise me two things. One, I want you to be my friend, and two, I want you to work.’

“I said, ‘I thought that’s what got me in here.’

“He said, ‘Hard work never hurt nobody. I want you to promise me you’ll go back to the clubs.’

“So they wheeled me into the room and I asked the nurse for a piece of paper. I drew a line down the middle. I wrote down all the things I didn’t like, the things I couldn’t do. And I wrote the things I would like to do if I went back to work.”

Paul knew exactly what he wanted to do.

“For my whole career, all the things I’d done, nothing impressed me as much as just playing in a little club. There’s no pressure. You can do what you want to do.”

In his late 60s, already set for life financially, Paul started looking for work.

“I looked all over. I came to New York and I looked for a place. I finally walked up to the maitre d’ of the place and said, ‘My name’s Les Paul.’

“He said, ‘How many will be seated?’

“I said, ‘I don’t want to be seated. I want to talk to you about a job.’

“He looked at this old guy and thought, ‘He wants a job here?’

“So he said, ‘What kind of work do you do?’ – figuring I was going to wash dishes or something like that.

“I said, ‘I’m a musician. Obviously you’ve never heard of me.’

“I asked if he had an owner. I walked over to the owner and introduced myself to the owner and he said, ‘Not the Les Paul?’

“I knew that was good.

“He said, ‘What are you doing in this joint?’

“I said, ‘I’m looking for a job. I want to go to work. I want to come in here and play with a trio one night a week.’ I said, ‘I hear you’re closed on Monday.’

“‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘We’re closed. I don’t know how we can work that out.’

“I said, ‘Well, I’ll work for nothing.’

“He said, ‘We’re open Mondays!’ ”

Back to the stage

From 1984 to 1995, Paul, backed by Lou Pallo on guitar and Wayne Wright on bass, was a Monday night fixture at Fat Tuesdays. But the hands continued to get worse. To cope with the pain, Paul took medication, which eventually gave him an ulcer. There was no choice but to quit playing.

While Paul was mending, he got a call from Ron Sturm, the owner of a new jazz club in New York City.

“He said, ‘When you’re ready, I want you here. No matter what the deal is, we’ll top it. We want you.’ So I knew I had a home when I got well enough,” Paul recalls.

Still, when he came to the Iridium in 1996, he had doubts.

“I thought, ‘What am I going to do? I can’t play like I used to. I can’t do what I used to do. The hands are all messed up. What am I going to do?’ … I’d been away from it for a year. I went up there and the audience seemed to not mind at all.

“It was at that time that a woman came over to the bar. She said she didn’t want to drink, she just wanted to talk to Les Paul. She was a nurse. She said, ‘I came over here to tell you something.’ She said, ‘Many of the people who are coming in to see you are coming because of what you used to do, but they’re not expecting you to do what you used to do. They’re expecting to see and hear what you can do now… .’ She made me understand that if Joe Louis got into the ring at 75, he’s not going to be what he was when he was 20. And nobody expects him to be that. So with that in mind, I went up on the stage with an understanding of myself, what I could do and what I couldn’t do and I could live with it. And it worked.”

Deep, wide imprint

Paul’s influence continues to ripple through rock, jazz and country. All Music Guide describes his style as “astonishingly fluid, hard-swinging” with “extremely rapid runs, fluttered and repeated single notes and clunking rhythm support.” It was a style that carried him easily across musical boundaries. The late Atkins, surely the most influential of all country pickers (and an important architect of the Nashville sound), always cited Les Paul as a major touchstone.

“The story’s been repeated of Les coming to Springfield, Missouri, and seeing Chet play at KWTO and Chet, not knowing that Les was watching, was trying to impress this guy who was paying special attention to what Chet was doing,” recalls Jay Orr, senior museum editor of the Country Music Hall of Fame. “Then later he found out that it was Les Paul. Chet felt a little bashful because he had been showing off with some of Les Paul’s patented licks.”

Although he’s never played rock ‘n’ roll himself, Paul’s imprint has been felt on rock since the beginning.

Many second generation ’60s rockers grew up listening to the Ventures and their guitar hits, such as “Walk, Don’t Run” “Perfidia” and “Hawaii 5-O.” Bob Bogel of the Ventures says Paul was a huge inspiration to his band.

“We were influenced by him, but we didn’t try to play his style,” Bogel says. “He was way too accomplished for us… . I’ve always admired his work and I’ve always been a huge fan of his. In interviews they’d ask us our influences and we’d always say The Big Three: Les Paul and Chet Atkins and Duane Eddy.” Today major rock guitarists such as Eddie Van Halen, Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Slash have acknowledged their debt. Jazz musicians pay him homage as well. Some of the highest profile players in the world, such as George Benson and Al Di Meola, are huge fans. Di Meola played at Paul’s 88th birthday party at the Iridium.

At his Monday night shows, brother celebrities come to pay homage almost as a matter of course. Tony Bennett. Harry Belafonte. Brian Setzer. George Benson. Paul McCartney. Jeff Beck. Paul Shaffer. Keith Richards.

Reflecting on the common heritage shared by such disparate artists and styles of music, blues rocker Jon Paris says, “All roads lead to Les.”

In his element

In the late afternoon, the basement jazz club is deserted except for staffers setting out gray tablecloths and place settings. Vintage jazz posters dot the walls: Cab Calloway at the Cotton Club … Benny Goodman at some hotel in Pittsburgh. Diana Krall’s version of “Let’s Face the Music and Dance” is heard through the monitors. Although reputed to be “richer than God,” the old guitarist carries his Gibson solid body in a battered case with frayed edges and duct tape wrapped around the handle.

A notoriously indifferent dresser, Paul is resplendent by his standards: black slacks and a short black jacket over a burgundy turtleneck. Perched on a stool, fussing over his guitar, he has an almost professorial countenance. The pudgy frame he had in his prime has thinned and withered. The carrot hair has whitened and thinned. He wears glasses, and there are hearing aids in both ears. Still, for a man edging toward 90, he moves fairly well. But when he walks only the left arm swings. That crooked right arm just hangs.

Gradually the rest of the band drifts in. Rhythm guitarist Lou Pallo has played with Paul off and on for 40 years. Acoustic bassist Nicki Parrott, 32, is a much newer addition. She came to the states from Australia on an arts council scholarship and stayed, and has been playing with Paul for 21/2 years. Joining them tonight will be guitarist Howard Alden, a boyish 40-year-old with an imposing list of jazz credits. The sound check/rehearsal material anticipates the sets: “All of Me,” “Begin the Beguine,” “Caravan,” “Tennessee Waltz” done as a guitar boogie.

“He rehearses the same material week after week,” says Iridium co-owner Ellen Hart. “He’s very precise. Everything has to be exact.” Eventually, Paul gets the sound where he wants it and the band heads backstage for a chicken dinner. Here, Paul is perhaps even more in his element, greeting visitors and holding court.

A thirtyish documentary filmmaker is sitting next to Paul on a couch, and she scratches his back while they chat. She stops for a moment, and he pipes up with, “OK. My crotch itches now.”

Without a pause she fires back, “I can take care of that!”

Nurturing Waukesha tie

Paul claims he’s busier than ever, no small boast from a man renowned as a hard pusher who continues to live on what Nashville calls Central Elvis Time. He rarely rises before noon or 1 p.m. and stays up typically until 4 a.m. This day, he will do two one-hour sets at the Iridium, sign autographs until midnight, do two radio interviews and eventually turn in back in Mahwah around 8 a.m.

“His pace is go-go-go. Even now,” says his friend and biographer Robb Lawrence, who lived with the guitarist for several months in the mid-’70s. Paul is working on two books and coordinating Les Paul exhibits at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, the Smithsonian Institution and the Waukesha County Historical Society & Museum.

Although the Historical Society is still fund-raising and hasn’t set an opening date, Executive Director Sue Baker says: “It will be the showcase exhibit in the museum. It will be 5,000 square feet. It will be large and hands-on. When you walk in, you will walk into Les’ world in Waukesha.”

Paul clearly loves to reminisce and spin tales about the old days. Lawrence says, “Les has a great sense of humor, and he is known to create tall stories for the love of it.”

Shaughnessy agrees. “He overwhelms you with stories,” says the author of “Les Paul: An American Original,” published in 1993. “He’s a champion storyteller. Half of it is bull, but it’s fun to listen to.”

Bing Crosby is clearly a favorite topic. Working with Crosby on radio, Paul backed such legends as Bob Hope, Jimmy Durante, W.C. Fields, the Andrews Sisters and Frank Sinatra. He claims to remember being there the first time Crosby and Sinatra met. He recalls Crosby was wary before the show.

“Bing was in the men’s room. So I go in the men’s room and I’m right next to him and Bing says to me, ‘Can the kid sing?’ That was his question.

“I said, ‘I’m afraid so.’

“So I walked out and he was still in there washin’ and puttin’ his wig on. So I walked out and Hedda Hopper (the gossip columnist) was there. I was leaning against the door. She said, ‘Have you seen Bing?’ I said, ‘Yeah, he’s in there.’ She said thanks and she went in.

“So Bing comes out and he says, ‘Where’s that goddamn redhead?’ ”

A special night

Business interrupts the backstage chat. It’s showtime. The Iridium introduces him as “The man who changed the music for all of us – The Wizard of Waukesha – Les Paul.”

The stories continue on-stage. Some of them are awful jokes at the expense of Pallo. And there’s lots of benign flirting with Nicki Parrott. He tells the crowd she makes him feel like an old building with a new flagpole.

She rejoins with a randy blues song: “I’m an evil gal, Les; I like older men; think they’re the best; One night with Les and you’ll forget all the rest. Les, get that Viagra.”

Woven into the comedy are the songs: “Sunny Side of the Street.” “Blue Skies.” “Over the Rainbow.” “Someone To Watch Over Me.” “It Had To Be You.” “The Sheik of Araby.” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered.” “Sweet Georgia Brown.” One of the old hits with Ford – “How High the Moon.” Paul even sings “Bill Bailey.” Everybody gets to solo, and there’s clearly an effort to rest that ailing left hand.

During the second set, the guests start to come up. There’s a dancer friend of Parrott’s named Roxane Butterfly. She tap dances to “Tea For Two” and the crowd loves it. Old friend and fellow Wisconsinite Jon Paris comes up. With him tonight is former Muddy Waters band member Steady Rollin’ Bob Margolin. Margolin romps through an impromptu “Don’t Let Me Kill This Woman Please.”

Everything works. The crowd loves Margolin. They love Paris. Most of all, they love Paul. For an encore, he does “Paper Moon.”

“This is a wonderful night for us,” he tells the crowd.

After the show, he sits at a table in back of the club and signs autographs and poses for pictures for two hours. A line of perhaps 60 people stretches through the club. Everybody gets an autograph, a picture or both. Some get two or three autographs.

The left hand is still iced, but Paul sits patiently, sipping a Haake Beck non-alcoholic beer, chatting and posing for pictures. He signs books, CDs, pictures, programs, guitars, ball caps and body parts. A professor from Texas, in New York with a group of students, insists he sign her breast with a felt pen, and he cheerfully obliges.

“I sign lots of boobs,” he says.

The fans, who appear to range in age from early 20s to early 60s, approach Paul with a mixture of good cheer and awe.

“Mr. Paul, I can’t say what a privilege this is. My whole life I’ve been waiting to meet you… . ”

“Can I have a hug?”

“Hi Mr. Paul. It’s a honor to meet you… . Thank you for all you’ve done. It certainly made my life more enjoyable.”

Everyone gets a moment, and Paul seems to love it almost as much as they do. And yet there’s a part of it that still mystifies him.

He mentions it while leaving the club.

“Bing asked me, ‘Why do people like me?’ He didn’t know. I don’t think he or Sinatra understood that. I’m the same way. I have no idea why people like what it is that I do.”

“The Wizard of Waukesha” took up his first instrument, a harmonica, at age eight. By 13, he was performing. His incredible trajectory is thoroughly explored in AMERICAN MASTERS Les Paul: Chasing Sound. Here are some highlights from his life and career.

1915
Lester William Polfuss is born June 9 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, to parents George and Evelyn Polfuss.

1923-6
Punches new holes into his mother’s player piano rolls, achieving a crude multi-track effect; learns harmonica from an itinerant ditch-digger; builds a crystal radio set and begins weekend studies of sound electronics with WTMJ radio engineer.

1927-8
Receives first guitar – a Sears, Roebuck Troubadour; performs in Waukesha as “Red Hot Red;” meets idols Gene Autry and Pie Plant Pete touring with Chicago’s WLS Barn Dance shows; experiments with amplification and electrified guitar at Beekman’s Bar-B-Q; builds first disc-cutting lathe with Cadillac flywheel and dental belts; attempts first “solid-body” guitar, using a railroad track strung with wire and a telephone amplifier as the pickup.

1929
Joins Rube Tronson and his Texas Cowboys for a summer gig in Escanaba, Michigan, and befriends his mentor and guitar tutor, “Sunny Joe” Wolverton.

1932
Drops out of high school and teams up with Wolverton as “Sunny Joe” and “Rhubarb Red,” performing for “hillbilly” radio stations in Springfield and St. Louis, Missouri.

1933
Rhubarb Red and Sunny Joe move on to Chicago to perform at the World’s Fair and then with WBBM, until Paul decides to pursue jazz – living a dual identity as Rhubarb Red on daytime radio and as Les Paul at night, jamming with the jazz greats.

1934-6
Forms the Les Paul Trio with Ernie Newton and Jimmie Atkins; makes Decca blues recordings with Georgia White; and begins the first of many solid-body guitar experiments, paying the Larson Brothers $15 to build a single cutaway half-inch maple top, with no f-holes and two pickups.

1937
Joins Fred Waring and the Pennsylvanians on NBC radio, bringing the sound of the electric guitar to millions of listeners coast to coast.

1939
Performs in a White House concert for President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

1941
Working weekends at the Epiphone factory in New York City, builds “The Log” by attaching a standard Epiphone neck, strings and wings to a 4×4 board with a pickup. When M. H. Berlin, president of Gibson Guitar’s parent company, takes little interest in this “solid-body,” Paul braces an Epiphone hollow body with a 3/8-inch steel bar, winds his own super-hot pickups and, for a decade or more, uses “The Klunker” as his primary electrified guitar for performing and recording.

1942
Moves to Los Angeles with the dream of teaming up with Bing Crosby and replacing the late Eddie Lang, Paul’s guitar idol.

1944
Drafted into Armed Forces Radio Service, where he creates V-Disc recordings and AFRS radio shows. Tangles with Nat Cole during the first “Jazz at the Philharmonic” concert in Los Angeles, one of history’s most famous jams.

1945
Provides brilliant accompaniment for Bing Crosby’s post-war record hit “It’s Been a Long, Long Time.” Impressed with Paul’s technical wizardry, Crosby urges him to build a studio. Paul soundproofs his garage in Hollywood, where he records the Andrews Sisters, Art Tatum, Jo Stafford, Andy Williams, Kay Starr, Pee Wee Hunt, Andre Previn, Tex Williams, and W.C. Fields.

1945
Gene Autry introduces Colleen Summers (Mary Ford) to Paul, who returns to his “Rhubarb Red” persona to perform “hillbilly” radio shows with Ford on NBC.

1946
Paul’s mother complains that every guitar player on the radio sounds just like him. Paul leaves tour with the Andrews Sisters and returns to his garage studio in Hollywood for two years of research into echo, overdubbing, phasing, and other recording effects.

1948
Emerges from studio with 22 “New Sound” recordings of multiple overdubbed guitars; Capitol Records releases Paul’s first solo hit single – “Lover” backed by “Brazil.” Paul and Ford inaugurate their musical act in Waukesha; en route back to California, their convertible careens off Route 66 during a winter storm. Paul’s right arm is badly damaged and doctors recommend amputation, but Paul persuades them to re-set arm in a crook so that he can continue to play.

1949
Bing Crosby commissions Ampex Corporation to produce the first tape recorder, based on the wartime German prototype. Bing gives first Ampex model to Paul, who promptly orders an additional recording head and invents the “sound-on-sound” tape machine. Paul marries Mary Ford and hosts a radio show, “The Les Paul Show,” which airs for 23 weeks.

1950
Gibson Guitar Corp. begins work on a solid-body electric guitar and seeks endorsement of the most prominent guitarist of the day.

1951
“How High the Moon” and “Walkin’ & Whistlin’ Blues” are chart-busters; Paul and Ford play the London Palladium.

1951-6:
Paul and Ford create a string of 14 consecutive pop hits, including “Mocking Bird Hill,” “Tennessee Waltz,” “Bye, Bye, Blues,” “Tiger Rag,” “Waiting for the Sunrise,” and “I’m Sitting on Top of the World.”

1952
Moves to Mahwah, New Jersey, to produce “Les Paul & Mary Ford At Home,” a series of 5-minute television shows (170 episodes) sponsored by Listerine. Release of the Gibson “Gold Top,” the first commercial “Les Paul model” solid-body electric guitar.

1953
Conceives of 8-track tape recorder and works with Ampex to refine and manufacture the equipment. Release of Paul and Ford’s biggest hit, “Vaya Con Dios.”

1955
As guest speaker at Audio Engineers Society convention, Paul proposes the “use of light for recording sound.”

1956
Invents the “Les Paulverizer,” a remote-control device he attaches below the tailpiece of his guitar to manipulate the taped accompaniment he and Ford used during their White House concert for President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

1957
Ampex delivers first operational 8-track recorder to Paul. Capitol Records contract ends as rock and roll pushes Paul and Ford off the charts. They sign with Mitch Miller at Columbia Records.

1963
Paul and Ford separate.

1964
Retires from performing, but not from tinkering with pickup designs and other electronics.

1964
Divorced from Mary Ford.

1975
Carnegie Hall concert with Bucky Pizzarelli, George Benson and Laurindo Almeida.

1976
Emerges from retirement to record “Chester & Lester” with Chet Atkins, and a 1978 follow-up, “Guitar Monsters.” The former receives a 1977 Grammy for “Best Country Instrumental Performance.”

1977
Mary Ford dies in Los Angeles after lapsing into diabetic coma.

1979
Receives Recording Academy’s Grammy Hall of Fame Award for “How High the Moon.”

1980
Quintuple by-pass heart surgery at the Cleveland Clinic.

1983
Receives prestigious Trustees Award from the Recording Academy.

1984
Launches a regular Monday night gig with his trio in New York City, first at Fat Tuesdays and then at the Iridium Jazz Club.

1985
Induction into Hollywood Guitar Center’s “Rock Walk of Fame.”

1988
Lauded in a Cinemax tribute, Les Paul: He Changed the Music, with B.B. King, Eddie Van Halen and others.

1988
Induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as “Architect of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

1996
Induction into New Jersey Inventors Hall of Fame; presented The John Smithson Bicentennial Medal by the Smithsonian Institution.

1997
Featured in a celebrated Coors “Original” beer commercial: Young rocker: “What’s your name?” Les Paul: “It’s on your guitar.”

2001
Awarded a Technical Grammy by the Recording Academy.

2005
Celebrates his 90th birthday with a tribute concert at Carnegie Hall; inducted into National Inventors Hall of Fame; receives Sammy Cahn Lifetime Achievement Award from the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

2006
Two 2005 Grammy awards – Best Pop Instrumental Performance (”Caravan”) and Best Rock Instrumental Performance (”69 Freedom Special”) – for Les Paul & Friends (Capitol), his first new album in almost 30 years. Among Paul’s musical partners: Keith Richards, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and Buddy Guy.

Ahmet Ertegun once told graduates of Berklee College of Music in Boston that he loved jazz, blues and hanging out. From the start, Ertegun devoted his career to what he loved. His incredible life is fully explored in AMERICAN MASTERS Atlantic Records: The House That Ahmet Built. Below are some highlights from Atlantic Records and Ahmet Ertegun:

July 31, 1923

Born in Istanbul, Turkey. Son of Turkish diplomat Mehmet Munir Ertegun and Hayrunisa Rustem.

Early years

Raised at embassies in Switzerland, France and England.

1932

Older brother Nesuhi takes Ertegun to see Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington at the Palladium in London.

1934

Moves with family to Washington, D.C., when his father becomes Turkish ambassador to the U.S.

1937

At age 14, Ertegun’s mother buys him a record cutting machine. Taking a Cootie Williams instrumental, “West End Blues,” he writes lyrics to it. With the instrumental playing on a record player he sings lyrics into the microphone as the record plays.

1944

Graduates from St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD. Goes on to graduate studies in philosophy at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Father dies, is buried at Arlington National Cemetery and, in 1946, his remains are transported back to Turkey on the USS Missouri.

1947

Co-founds Atlantic Records in New York City with friend and jazz fan Herb Abramson (a dental student and A&R man for National Records) and a $10,000 loan from Ertegun’s family dentist. They pick the name after hearing of a label called Pacific Jazz. Atlantic’s first office is in the condemned Jefferson Hotel on 56th Street between Sixth Avenue and Broadway. The living room is used as the office.

1948

First Atlantic records released.

Late 1940s

Travels to New Orleans to scout Professor Longhair, which convinces the label to incorporate New Orleans sound in recordings. The more sophisticated and jazz-oriented session men are unable to recreate the precise sound, but in the process create the “Atlantic Sound,” which supports all the label’s singers with boogie-based, sax-lead band arrangements that are an internal part of the song.

1949

“Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee” by Stick McGhee is Atlantic’s first major hit record.

Signs and produces Ray Charles, Professor Longhair, the Clovers, Big Joe Turner, Ruth Brown, LaVern Baker, the Drifters, and many others. Atlantic becomes the country’s preeminent R&B label.

Songwriting credits include Ben E. King’s “Don’t Play That Song (You Lied);” The Clovers’ “Don’t You Know I Love You;” “Fool, Fool, Fool,” and “Lovey Dovey;” Big Joe Turner’s “Chains of Love;” “Sweet Sixteen;” and “Midnight Special Train.”

1951

Jerry Wexler joins Atlantic as a partner, paying $2063.25 for a 13 percent share.

1953

Ray Charles records a song that marks a stylistic departure, “Mess Around,” written by Ertegun under the name Nugetre.

1955

Atlantic offers Colonel Tom Parker $25,000 for Elvis Presley’s contract but loses out to RCA.

1956

Nesuhi Ertegun joins Atlantic. He initially develops Atlantic’s album department and builds up the label’s extensive jazz catalog, producing John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, and the Modern Jazz Quartet.

1958

Begins to produce string of hits for Bobby Darin, including “Splish Splash” and “Mack the Knife.”

1959

Darin earns two Grammy Awards, Atlantic’s first.

1961

Marries Ioana Maria Banu. Known as Mica, she becomes a prominent interior designer.

1965

Ertegun moves Atlantic further into pop world by signing Sonny & Cher.

1960s

Atlantic dominates soul music revolution with Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, Booker T. and the MG’s, Sam and Dave, Clarence Carter, King Curtis, and many others.

Ushers in groundbreaking period in history of white rock and roll, signing Buffalo Springfield, Eric Clapton & Cream, The Rascals, The Bee Gees, Led Zeppelin, Yes, Crosby Stills & Nash (and sometimes Young), and Blind Faith before the decade is out.

1967

Ertegun and Atlantic partners sell label to Warner-Seven Arts. Ertegun retains creative control.

1968

Wexler signs Led Zeppelin (consisting of ex-Yardbird and session mainstay Jimmy Page, Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones) to Atlantic.

1971

Signs the Rolling Stones, an association that lasts 14 years.

Co-founds Cosmos soccer team in New York and serves as president of the club.

1972

Signs Bette Midler.

1973

Brings Genesis to Atlantic.

1974

Signs Manhattan Transfer.

Elevated from president to become first chairman/CEO of Atlantic.

1983

With Jann Wenner, co-founds Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation. Named chairman.

1987

Inducted into Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

1991

Receives Honorary Doctorate from Berklee College of Music.

1993

Receives Trustees Award from National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences.

1994

Alaska-born vocalist Jewel releases her first Atlantic album, Pieces of You.

Atlantic releases an album with Jose Carreras, Placido Domingo and Luciano Pavarotti: The Three Tenors in Concert 1994.

1995

Main exhibition hall at new Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland is named for Ahmet Ertegun.

1998

Kid Rock debuts on Top Dog/Lava/Atlantic with Devil Without a Cause.

2000

Honored as a “Living Legend” by United States Library of Congress.

2003

Inducted into National Soccer Hall of Fame.

Ertegun and wife Mica donate gift to establish Ertegun Jazz Hall of Fame at Jazz at Lincoln Center, in honor of Ahmet’s brother Nesuhi.

2004

Named founding chairman of Atlantic Records.

2005

Receives President’s Merit Award from National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences.

2006

Honored with opening night concert at 40th Montreux Jazz Festival.

December 14, 2006

Dies in New York City at age 83.

Since her introduction to filmmaking through the classic rock documentaries Woodstock and Gimme Shelter, Susan Steinberg has developed an intriguing body of work on subjects as diverse as Edward R. Murrow and Paul Simon. In interviews both before and after Ahmet Ertegun’s death in December, the director discusses AMERICAN MASTERS Atlantic Records: The House That Ahmet Built.

Q: What in your filmmaking background prepared you for this project?

A: AMERICAN MASTERS executive producer Susan Lacy hired me to do this because I have a background in music and in journalism. I’ve always been very interested in the field of communications and the powers that be. My first film for AMERICAN MASTERS was on Edward R. Murrow, the famed journalist who basically created broadcast journalism in the United States as we know it. Susan then asked me to direct 90 Minutes on 60 Minutes about the news broadcast magazine format show. My early days I spent working as an editor and an assistant on Gimme Shelter, on Woodstock and on a film that Robert Frank did called C***sucker Blues, a notorious underground film on the Rolling Stones. I also was the supervising editor on the AMERICAN MASTERS film on Ray Charles and made History of Rock n’ Roll in Ten Minutes for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum, which Ahmet was very involved with. I had a background that he could respect. I had a combination of dealing with powerful people and music. I think I was a natural choice for Susan to direct this film on Ahmet and Atlantic Records.

Q: Tell us about your initial interaction with Ahmet Ertegun.

A: Susan Lacy set it up so that I would meet him when he went with his niece to a dinner at Princeton University where Ahmet, in honor of his father, had sponsored a chair for the Turkish Department. What struck me, in particular, was the way he conducted a dinner party that night. He rented a private dining room, set up the tables in an open square and carefully orchestrated the placement of the guests, who were virtual strangers. Before the night was over, this diverse group of people were laughing and talking as if they had known each other for years, listening to Ahmet tell hilarious stories. That’s when I first saw Ahmet, the son of a diplomat, at work.

Ahmet is a very eloquent, well-educated man, who is also very funny. He doesn’t speak in sound bites. Having seen him interviewed in other films, I had never seen the real Ahmet. The past interviews had showed what he knew, but not his personality, nor his character. While watching him at the dinner party something occurred to me: Ahmet is very sociable and his personality comes alive when he is in conversation. I discussed with Susan Lacy the idea of structuring the film around a series of conversations between Ahmet and the people he felt had been most important to him personally and professionally over the years, people whose lives had affected Atlantic Records and, in turn, whose lives Ahmet had affected. Ahmet gave Susan Lacy, the producer Phil Carson and I a list of these people and that’s whom we went to see.

Q: Who was on the list?

A: Everyone. Mick Jagger. Robert Plant. Bette Midler. His friend Henry Kissinger, his close friend Julio Mario Santo Domingo. Jimmy Page. Phil Collins. Ray Charles. Aretha Franklin. Eric Clapton. And many more. It took us over four years to get all these people with Ahmet, on film. Of course, none of us could have known that this would be the last time. These filmed conversations took on another quality that could not have been anticipated. Ahmet died on December 14, 2006, just six weeks after we had completed our final interview with him.

Q: Ertegun discovered a love of music at a very early age, correct?

A: Oh, yes. There’s a wonderful story of Ahmet growing up that’s told by his sister, Selma, who lives in Turkey. When Ahmet was about three years old, an aunt drew him a picture of an old-fashioned phonograph. Ahmet was delighted. He then said, “Put the record on.” So they drew the record. And then he said, “Play it.” Obviously, they couldn’t play it. Ahmet started to cry, saying “Play it, play it.” He wouldn’t give up until he wore himself out.

His passion and love of music began early. His mother played several instruments and she loved Turkish music. His older brother, Nesuhi, who was his mentor, fell in love with jazz as a young boy growing up in Paris. He would bring home jazz records and play them for his baby brother. Right from the start, Ahmet and Nesuhi had discovered their true love, jazz.

Q: Did he always know he was going to become a music producer – and did his father have a different idea?

A: He started out as a music lover and a record collector. He and his brother had collected 25,000 records, one of the largest jazz/blues collections in the world. At first it was a passion and a hobby. He said that everyone, including his father, expected that he would enter the diplomatic corps, saying “If my father had not died, I don’t think I would have been able to start Atlantic Records.” He had the brains and wherewithal to be a fantastic diplomat, which he exhibited throughout his entire career. Whether dealing with the Turkish government or with finicky artists or men in the record business, Ahmet utilized his tremendous diplomatic skills. Although he had strong opinions on almost everything, he could get along with anyone.

Q: What makes him an American Master?

A: Consider the fact that American pop culture, including music and movies, is probably one of the largest exports of this country. American music has influenced the world and Ahmet was one of the major players in making that happen. He fell in love with indigenous black American music and he brought it to the world. He wasn’t the only one, but he was pivotal. In Britain during the ’60s, there were all these talented young kids who had grown up listening to Atlantic Records, to Ray Charles, Clyde McPhatter, Big Joe Turner, Otis Redding, Wilson Picket. These kids were mesmerized by the same sounds that had seduced Ahmet – rhythm and blues, blues and jazz. Ahmet was attracted to these young musicians and they were attracted to him. It wasn’t surprising that Atlantic became the record company of choice for the up and coming British rockers of the ’60s: Cream, Blind Faith, the Stones, and Led Zeppelin.

Q: Speaking of that time period, you use clips from the controversial film on the Rolling Stones, C***sucker Blues, which was considered unreleasable because of its unabashed depiction of sex, drugs and rock and roll. How did you happen to include it in this film?

A: My first job as a film editor came about when Robert Frank, the famous photographer, hired me to edit this film that he had shot on the 1972 Rolling Stones tour of America, which coincided with the Stone’s release of the LP, Exile on Main Street. This was the second album the Stones made after they signed to Atlantic. There was footage of Ahmet backstage with Mick Jagger and friends. Since this was one of the few pieces of film that actually showed Ahmet hanging out with the bands backstage, something he often did, I wanted to include it. In fact, many say that Ahmet’s secret ingredient to success was his ability to hang out with the best of them. When we filmed the Mick Jagger and Ahmet together, I asked them about the film and they were so funny that I couldn’t resist including a bit of it in the program. The Stones gave us permission to do so.

Q: I wonder about the early Atlantic artists. All the successful musicians that Atlantic signed didn’t get rich like the Stones?

A: Oh no, of course not. One of the controversies that we dealt with in the film surrounded the royalty issue brought out in the open by early R&B artists like Ruth Brown against Atlantic. In the early days, the practice of paying royalties was almost nonexistent. Ahmet and Atlantic were generous on an ad hoc basis, like paying hospital bills for the young Ruth Brown, or paying for Joe Turner’s funeral. But when it came to royalties, they were surprisingly no better than the other record companies. It wasn’t a question of race. Leiber and Stoller speak of not getting royalties due to them from another record company after their song “Hound Dog,” first recorded by Big Mama Thornton, was a huge success. The whole world of R&B was run without great regard for artists’ rights. It was the way of the world in the late ’40s and ’50s.

With the advent of CDs and reissues and large foreign sales, things had to change. Ruth Brown led the fight and eventually won artists the rights and royalties they deserved. In the 1980s, as a result of her fight, everything changed. Royalty structures were reformulated and artists today certainly reap the benefits of their work, that is, if they are successful.

Q: What other controversies are addressed in the film?

A: Payola was and still is a practice that could not be avoided if you were to survive in the record business. The paying off of DJs was the rule of the game if you wanted your records played on the radio. And, of course, without play time, nobody would hear your records and thus they didn’t sell. I guess it was a method of advertising in the early days. And Atlantic did what other record companies did to survive.

What I hadn’t realized during the payola scandals was that it was not illegal to pay disc jockeys to play your record; rather it was illegal for the DJ not to give the money to the record station that they worked for. In other words, it was a bribe if the DJ pocketed the cash. We use the arrest of Alan Freed in the ’50s to talk about this practice. But just a month ago, I noticed that another “payola scandal” had made the front page.

Q: What did Ertegun think of rap music?

A: He loved rap. Ahmet never stopped growing. A lot of people – artists, promoters, entrepreneurs and business people – get stuck in the particular period that they began with. But Ahmet wasn’t like that. Ahmet just kept going. He was able to make transitions from jazz to rhythm and blues to soul to rock and roll to hard rock and to rap. He recorded all kinds of music, from opera to Turkish folk music.

He was always interested in what was happening today and tomorrow. When it came to rap, he understood that rap was the music of today. Rap artists were saying something that Ahmet understood and felt was important. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons he adored Kid Rock, who musically came of age working as a DJ in the black neighborhoods of Detroit.

Q: What is the Atlantic Sound?

A: The Atlantic sound seemed to grow out of the dream team that was created by this Tiffany of music companies, when it was Tom Dowd as the mixer, Jerry Wexler as a producer, Ahmet as a producer, Arif Mardin as a producer, Jesse Stone as an arranger. A very talented group of people. It was more sophisticated than Chess Records, which was for Chicago blues. It wasn’t exactly Motown. It was somewhere in between those two, but it was much more sophisticated.

Q: What’s the best way to describe Ahmet Ertegun?

A: Smart, funny, eclectic, a little perverse, sociable, passionate, and entrepreneurial. Although Ahmet came to America with a silver spoon in his mouth, he reminded me of the early Hollywood moguls who were also immigrants, but of a different sort. They all had confidence in their own instincts and their own judgments and they were willing always to bet on them. They didn’t need market research to tell them what was happening.

Q: What did you learn that surprised you the most?

A: How funny he was. And how much fun he was. I went to Turkey to film him in Bodrum, where he and Mica have a fantastic seaside home. I saw Ahmet on vacation, where he’d spend the day on his yacht with friends and then entertain 15 to 20 at his home every single, solitary night. He was the master of ceremony, par excellence. After dining, when most 82 year olds would head to bed, Ahmet would go out clubbing, listening to whatever music was happening, drinking, laughing and talking. At 82, he was always the last to bed. Even though I’m a lot younger than him, it was hard to keep up with him. And that part blew me away.

Q: What did the musicians you spoke to say about him?

A: They talked about the extraordinary energy. Energy, energy, energy. The common thread was that out of all the record executives that they had ever met, here was a guy who really knew music. They really respected how much he knew about music and how much he loved the music. And his instincts. When Bette Midler was first being recorded, she was having a hard time in the studio. He remembered seeing her live with an audience, so he decided to record her live and he threw a party and he had her sing the whole album right there and then. That’s not common.

When he first heard Eric Clapton and Cream, he brought them to New York and he recorded an album, Disraeli Gears, with them in just four days. It changed their lives. He heard in Eric the innate talent and that of a true blues artist. That’s the reason that all these artists participated in this program. Ahmet was responsible in a certain way for their careers. He was instrumental in encouraging Phil Collins to go solo. When Phil Collins put out his first solo album, he sent it to Ahmet and Ahmet said, “You know, there’s this one song where the drums aren’t loud enough. The kids aren’t going to hear it. Go back and remix it.” They did, and that became the single hit for the album. After many different reincarnations of the Drifters, they lost their lead singer and one day when they were recording they were trying various people. Finally, Ahmet said, “Who wrote the song?” And it happened to be Ben E. King, and he said “Well, let him sing it.”

Q: With so much great music to choose from, how did you ever decide what to include?

A: To some degree the music chose itself by the relation between Ahmet and the particular musician that we were dealing with. If there were lots of hits, Pam Arnold, a fabulous editor, and I chose the one that was the most appropriate to tell the story.

Q: You must have uncovered some incredible early recordings during research.

A: The most extraordinary thing that we found was an audio track of Ahmet singing the lyrics of “Mess Around,” a song he had written for Ray Charles. When I first listened to the recording, I couldn’t believe it was Ahmet. But it was Ahmet Ertegun singing the lyrics to Ray Charles. He sounded great. I would have never guessed it was Ahmet singing.

Q: The film has one of the last filmed interviewed with Ray Charles.

A: Yes, it was the last interview that Ray Charles and Ahmet Ertegun ever did together. Ray died very shortly afterward. There aren’t many interviews of them together, if any. As a matter of fact, we only found two photographs of Ahmet and Ray together. We found interviews in a film about Eric Clapton. Ahmet was interviewed and Eric was interviewed, but not together.

Q: How did you structure the film with regard to the conversations between Ahmet and the musicians?

A: I had written a full-length treatment for the film. We set up the interviews with two high definition cameras, so that we would be able to inter-cut the conversation. I had written myself a list of topics that I wanted to be sure to cover, and from time to time I’d throw out something that I’d like them to talk about. That’s how it worked. It was very free and relaxed. Ahmet just visited with his friends and reminisced. But it was also structured around what I needed to tell the story. There were lots of left turns, and lots of times the guest would turn the tables and ask Ahmet questions as if they were interviewing him.

Q: How much did the cooperation of Atlantic Records and Ahmet Ertegun mean to this project?

A: You couldn’t do a film without Ahmet’s cooperation, which Susan Lacy and Phil Carson secured before we started filming. Remember, he was alive and well during filming. You could not possibly do this without Atlantic Records total, unadulterated, 100 percent cooperation. Ahmet was and is Atlantic records. Partners came and went, but Ahmet was the steady hand and the soul of the company.

Q: Describe your last interview with Ertegun.

A: Fortuitously, I did my very last interview with Ahmet about a month before he fell backstage at the Rolling Stones concert. I was not planning on doing my final interview until almost the end of the film. But we had been trying to get Ahmet to work with a new artist named James Blunt and he happened to be coming to town for a very large tour beginning at Radio City Music Hall and wanted to get together with Ahmet. I flew in from London just for that interview. Since I had a camera crew I thought I would flesh out my final interview with Ahmet. I had only 10 questions left to ask. Ahmet spoke to me for three hours. Bob Kaus, his public relations man who’s been with the company and with Ahmet for over 30 years, I believe, said it was by far the best interview that he had done in many years. His memory was extraordinary. I’m hoping the full interview will be available on the Web site or in a magazine because it really was terribly interesting, riveting.

Q: What were some of the 10 questions?

A: He always said that the two most important artists in the 20th century were Louis Armstrong and Pablo Picasso because they influenced everyone and everything in the 20th century. I wanted him to play a Louis Armstrong song that he particularly liked, to play Turkish Gypsy music, Duke Ellington and to talk to me about his ideas on music. I also wanted to talk to him about growing up in the embassy in Paris. I wanted to know more about the man, not necessarily just about the music business. Ahmet’s life is an enormous canvas and there is so much that didn’t make it into the two-hour program.

Q: What about his personal life?

A: He had no children. And he was married to the same woman, Mica Ertegun, for 48 years. She is as interesting as Ahmet. Ahmet was no pushover and nor is Mica. She is lovely. She has given us so much for the film, all the stills, family stills, and helped us also get home movies from Ahmet’s sister Selma that no one has ever seen before. They are fantastic. There’s footage of Ahmet and cousins in the Turkish embassy in Paris in the 1920s and also footage of Ahmet as a teenager, his mother, his brother and others dancing on the terrace of the Turkish embassy in Washington in the late 1930s.

Q: Please tell us about Phil Carson.

A: Phil Carson, the producer of the film, had a very close personal and professional relationship with Mr. Ertegun that began when Carson ran the London Atlantic records office in the mid ’60s. It lasted all this time. Carson’s involvement was an essential aspect of the film from the beginning to the end. I don’t think the film could have been made without Phil Carson.

Q: What are some of the themes of the film?

A: How the immigrant, the outsider, comes and sees America with fresh eyes. The theme of the diplomat, how his diplomatic upbringing impacted how he chose music and how he ran Atlantic Records. Ahmet the prankster, the party-loving guy. Part of his charm was that he could party. He had tradition and modernity, and the combination of both. One of the strongest themes is the duality of Ahmet. Ahmet had the capacity to be as comfortable with kings and queens as with the guy in the shop, in a juke joint and in a barbecue pit. He traversed both worlds easily, and all in between.

Q: What would you say is the most compelling aspect of the story?

A: You can’t really separate the man and the music. I always try to some degree to look at how a man impacts his world. To put him into a context. The film that I made for American Masters on the famed journalist, Edward R. Murrow, is as much about the history of broadcast journalism as it was about the man who created it. When I did an American Masters film about Don Hewitt, the man who created 60 Minutes, I was also able to explore the history of the magazine format show and how it changed television news throughout the world. I’ve tried to put Ahmet’s story into the context of the record industry. The record business has changed radically. Independent record companies like Atlantic Records are no longer what they were. To some degree, I hope that this film also serves as a historical document of what the record business is and was, for generations to come.

Q: Tell us about shooting at the Montreux Jazz Festival, which honored Ertegun last year.

A: Ahmet Ertegun supported every major musical project that took place in the 20th century. He supported Woodstock, he was one of the founders of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Museum. He was one of the people responsible for Jazz at Lincoln Center. He was at the center of promoting elements of popular music for 60 years. He and his brother were two of the first people to support Claude Nobbs in setting up the Montreux Jazz Festival, held every summer in Montreux, Switzerland. This year there was a tribute to Ahmet and Atlantic Records for their 60th anniversary.

I am so pleased that Ahmet was alive to see it, to enjoy it, and to receive the honors that he deserved. It was a fantastic evening and is part of our film. Many of our artists were there, namely Kid Rock, Robert Plant, Ben E. King, Solomon Burke, Stevie Nicks, Steve Winwood, Les McCann, Chaka Khan, and a young talent who is already well known in England – Paolo Nutini, 19 years old, half Scottish, half Italian. I was so pleased that Ahmet got to really enjoy that night. It was really something. And he was very touched.

Q: When is the 60th anniversary of Atlantic Records?

A: This year – 2007. Ahmet opened the door of Atlantic Records in 1947, so it’s very much the 60th anniversary.

Considered by many to be the greatest jazz vocalist of all time, Billie Holiday lived a tempestuous and difficult life. Her singing expressed an incredible depth of emotion that spoke of hard times and injustice as well as triumph. Though her career was relatively short and often erratic, she left behind a body of work as great as any vocalist before or since.

Born Eleanora Fagan in 1915, Billie Holiday spent much of her young life in Baltimore, Maryland. Raised primarily by her mother, Holiday had only a tenuous connection with her father, who was a jazz guitarist in Fletcher Henderson’s band. Living in extreme poverty, Holiday dropped out of school in the fifth grade and found a job running errands in a brothel. When she was twelve, Holiday moved with her mother to Harlem, where she was eventually arrested for prostitution.

Desperate for money, Holiday looked for work as a dancer at a Harlem speakeasy. When there wasn’t an opening for a dancer, she auditioned as a singer. Long interested in both jazz and blues, Holiday wowed the owner and found herself singing at the popular Pod and Jerry’s Log Cabin. This led to a number of other jobs in Harlem jazz clubs, and by 1933 she had her first major breakthrough. She was only twenty when the well-connected jazz writer and producer John Hammond heard her fill in for a better-known performer. Soon after, he reported that she was the greatest singer he had ever heard. Her bluesy vocal style brought a slow and rough quality to the jazz standards that were often upbeat and light. This combination made for poignant and distinctive renditions of songs that were already standards. By slowing the tone with emotive vocals that reset the timing and rhythm, she added a new dimension to jazz singing.

With Hammond’s support, Holiday spent much of the 1930s working with a range of great jazz musicians, including Benny Goodman, Teddy Wilson, Duke Ellington, Ben Webster, and most importantly, the saxophonist Lester Young. Together, Young and Holiday would create some of the greatest jazz recordings of all time. They were close friends throughout their lives—giving each other their now-famous nicknames of “Lady Day” and the “Prez.” Sympathetic to Holiday’s unique style, Young helped her create music that would best highlight her unconventional talents. With songs like “This Year’s Kisses” and “Mean To Me,” the two composed a perfect collaboration.

It was not, however, until 1939, with her song “Strange Fruit,” that Holiday found her real audience. A deeply powerful song about lynching, “Strange Fruit” was a revelation in its disturbing and emotional condemnation of racism. Holiday’s voice could be both quiet and strong at the same time. Songs such as “God Bless the Child” and “Gloomy Sunday” expressed not only her undeniable talent, but her incredible pain as well. Due to constant racial attacks, Holiday had a difficult time touring and spent much of the 1940s working in New York. While her popularity was growing, Holiday’s personal life remained troubled. Though one of the highest paid performers of the time, much of her income went to pay for her serious drug addictions. Though plagued by health problems, bad relationships, and addiction, Holiday remained an unequaled performer.

By the late 1940s, after the death of her mother, Holiday’s heroin addiction became so bad she was repeatedly arrested— eventually checking herself into an institution in the hopes of breaking her habit. By 1950, the authorities denied her a license to perform in establishments selling alcohol. Though she continued to record and perform afterward, this marked the major turning point in her career. For the next seven years, Holiday would slip deeper into alcoholism and begin to lose control of her once perfect voice. In 1959, after the death of her good friend Lester Young and with almost nothing to her name, Billie Holiday died at the age of forty-four. During her lifetime she had fought racism and sexism, and in the face of great personal difficulties triumphed through a deep artistic spirit. It is a tragedy that only after her death could a society, who had so often held her down, realize that in her voice could be heard the true voice of the times.