Rock & Roll Ambassador

Saudi Aramco World - November/December 2013 

The future impresario was born in the pine-forested, hilly enclave of Sultantepe, on the Asian side of Istanbul, on July 31, 1923, a week after the Treaty of Lausanne granted international recognition to the Turkish Republic led by Kemal Atatürk. Ertegun’s father, Mehmet Münir, was part of the Lausanne negotiating team, and he stayed on in Europe for 10 years to serve as Atatürk’s ambassador to Switzerland, France and Britain. In 1936, when surnames became mandatory in Turkey, Münir chose “Ertegün” (air-teh-gən), “living in a hopeful future,” as his family name  

Ahmet Ertegun’s first childhood memory was playing in the gardens of the Turkish embassy in Bern, Switzerland. Later, in Paris, he attended an exclusive lycée, where he achieved perfect scores in French and calculus. In London, Ertegun and his younger sister, Selma, were put under the care of a strict English governess whose previous charges had been Princess Elizabeth, the future queen, and her younger sister, Princess Margaret. 

Ertegun’s mother, Hayrünisa, was an accomplished musician who could play any keyboard or stringed instrument by ear. She bought the popular music of the day, and at night, Ertegun and his elder brother, Nesuhi, would sneak her records into their rooms. In 1932, Nesuhi took Ahmet to the London Palladium to see Cab Calloway and Duke Ellington. “I had never really seen black people,” Ertegun recalled in a 2005 interview. “And I had never heard anything as glorious as those beautiful musicians wearing white tails, playing these incredibly gleaming horns.” His infatuation with jazz got a boost two years later when his father was posted to Washington, D.C. as the Republic of Turkey’s first ambassador to the United States.

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