Whose funeral could bring together Kid Rock and Turkey's foreign minister Abdullah Gul?

In 1923, Ahmet Ertegun was born the son of a diplomat and close adviser to Ataturk. Indeed, before the Ottoman Empire collapsed, his father was sent to ask the founder of the Turk Republic not to resist the Allies. He was quoted by his son years later as saying to Ataturk, "Now I've done my duty to the sultan and if you need my services I am ready to resign from my post and join you."

A much different kind of revolution was to occur within young Ahmet when, having grown up in embassies throughout Europe, would be led by his older brother, Nesuhi, to a London concert featuring Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington. "I had never really seen black people except I had seen pictures of great artists," he would say in an interview years later (slate.com). "And I had never heard anything as glorious as those beautiful musicians, wearing great white tails playing these incredibly gleaming horns with drums and rhythm sections unlike you ever heard on records... So I became a jazz fan quite early and never went off the path thereafter."

After his father moved to Washington D.C. as ambassador to the US and died 10 years later, Ahmet and his brother stayed as the rest of the family returned to Turkey. Ahmet Ertegün was studying classical philosophy at St John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, then at Georgetown University, though he was more interested in hanging out in nightclubs and record shops. "I was totally unemployable," he explained (news.independent.co.uk). "So naturally I decided to go into the music business."

With his friend, Herb Abramson, and $10,000 loaned from the family dentist, Atlantic Records was founded. "We started Atlantic simply because we wanted to sign a few artists whose music we liked, and make the kind of records that we would want to buy. I honestly never imagined I would be able to make a living from doing something that was so much fun. I am very glad I was wrong."

Very wrong, he would be credited not only for discovering and propelling the career of Ray Charles among countless others, but with bridging black music to white kids, thus contributing to the de-segregation of the 50's. In the 60's, he introduced a long list of white rockers to the world's youth, most notably Led Zeppelin, and personally negotiated with Mick Jagger to begin a 14-year working relationship with Atlantic. He also co-founded the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the 80's and would be inducted himself a few years later. His brother, Nesuhi, whom also worked at Atlantic, would become the first teacher of a jazz course at an American university.

On October 29th, Ertegun fell into a coma after suffering a head injury at a Rolling Stones concert. He died on Dec. 14th and was buried today in Istanbul after a muslim ceremony. As far as his own views on Islam, he once said: "Well, look I'm Muslim by birth—and the rest I'll have to explain when I write my autobiography."

above photo by Fred Prouser/Reuters