The Last Sultan by Robert Greenfield

Author:Robert Greenfield
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

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During the two-year period after Atlantic had been sold, Ahmet and Wexler continued to run the label as partners while setting off in distinctly different directions to pursue their own interests in a record business that was expanding more rapidly than ever. Heading south to studios in Memphis and Muscle Shoals, Wexler returned to his roots and worked continuously, producing a variety of black artists whose music he loved and understood as well as anyone who ever lived.

Determined not to get fooled again by what became known as the second British invasion, during the late 1960s, Ahmet zeroed in on London as the place where he could find and sign new talent that had not yet broken in America. Setting up shop in the luxurious seventh-floor suite in the Dorchester Hotel on Park Lane designed by Oliver Messel where he always felt at home, Ahmet soon became a regular in the Scotch of St. James, the city’s hippest private club.

His initial connection to the second flowering of the English music scene was Chris Blackwell. Born in London, Blackwell was a dedicated rhythm and blues devotee who had grown up in privileged circumstances in Jamaica before returning to England to attend the exclusive Harrow School. As a teenager, he would regularly come to New York to buy 78 RPM singles for 43 cents and then take them back to Jamaica, where he sold them for as much as £100 apiece to “the sound system” guys who played music and sold liquor at island parties.

As Blackwell would later say, “The key thing was for me that if I came across an Atlantic record, I would pick it and if there was one I didn’t like, I would doubt my own taste because I had so much respect for the label because of the music they put out. That was something I wanted to emulate with Island Records. Where the label itself actually helped the act because if the act was on the label then the act must be interesting.”

Twenty-two years old when he founded Island in Jamaica in 1959, Blackwell first met Ahmet a year later in New York. As Blackwell was trying to persuade Miriam Bienstock to allow him to distribute Atlantic records in Jamaica, Ahmet “popped his head in” to say he had already made such an arrangement with Byron Lee, who led the Dragonaires and owned the Dynamic Sound recording studio. Four years later when Little Millie Small had a smash hit for Island in England with “My Boy Lollipop,” Blackwell did a deal for her next record “for no advance with Atlantic instead of Columbia for a $50,000 advance, something I never made the mistake of doing again.”

Once Ahmet began making regular visits to London, he and Blackwell started to spend time together “because we were kind of kindred spirits. He was basically my hero and sort of a father figure to me. A mentor in a way. Somebody I looked up to in every respect. He clearly

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