Both sons of the Turkish ambassador to the United States were jazz aficionados. At the end of 1947, Ahmet and Herb Abrahamson founded the Atlantic label in New York, to market the best in black music. Their initial capital amounted to $10,000. After twenty years of prestigious blues, jazz (whose catalog - John Coltrane, Modern Jazz Quartet, Ornette Coleman, among others - is managed by Nesuhi) and soul* (Ray Charles*, The Drifters*, Aretha Franklin*, Otis Redding* and the Stax* stable) successes, Atlantic joins Warner for some 20 million dollars. A wide opening to rock and pop followed.
