Ahmet Ertegun Quotes
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The main thing is that Ataturk saw the desperate condition of the countries that had not had an industrial revolution. 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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The songwriters whom we think of being the greatest songwriters usually write one hit and six or seven flops. That includes the Irving Berlins and the Hoagy Carmichaels, the Harold Arlens, Cole Porter.
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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 - 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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It is a great life, this life of music.
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I'd be happy if people said that I did a little bit to raise the dignity and recognition of the greatness of African-American music.
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There is a certain sort of excess that is interesting, don't you think? And America is, of course, the most excessive place.
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There's no place in the world you can go and not hear rock-and-roll, from Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder to Phil Collins.
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Flashy people aren't everything, you know. Even when they have frizzled hair.
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I don't use the computer. But my secretary does. I want to take some computer courses because I'm interested in some of the access to some of the illegal things on the Internet. I'm just kidding.
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A singer's biographical film should have their music and their voice.
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If anybody asks me where I'm from, my first inclination is to say, 'Washington,' because that's where I grew up meaningfully.
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America is remarkable, don't you think so? When I came to Washington, I was twelve years old. I spoke English with an English accent. It was assumed that it would go on in that way.
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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.