Here Comes the Night Read Online Free PDF

He told people he ran guns and drugs. His brief stay in Cuba became a touchstone in his life—a physical connection to his spiritual roots in the rhythm of the orishas , a pilgrimage to the home of the mambo, a moment where he was a part of all the madness, romance, and glamour swirling in the Havana night air. It may even have served as a galvanizing, cathartic event that provoked him out of his indolence and gave him his greatest artistic vision, his blending of the mambo and rock and roll. And it was always the source of stories, even though nobody at home knew the names of fabled musicians like Beny Moré or Arsenio Rodriguez, who had drawn him to Havana in the first place. But when he got home, he did tell his sister he met Fidel Castro.

Ahmet Ertegun, Nesuhi Ertegun, 1947

 
     
    II.
    Washington, DC [1947]
    A HMET ERTEGUN WENT into the recording studio the first time without any idea of what he was going to do. Smitten with American jazz, the young son of a distinguished Turkish diplomat took a raunchy blues singer who called herself Little Miss Cornshucks into a rented Washington, DC, studio in 1942 with a piano and a tenor and recorded her singing a few songs just for the hell of it.
    Already balding, not yet twenty years old, the bespectacled young man wore crisp blazers and alligator shoes with a gleaming polish. He grew up ritzy in the luxury and privilege of embassy life. His father was the most trusted advisor to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the inspirational father of modern Turkey, who posted Munir Ertegun in the great capitals of Europe—Paris and London—before dispatching him to Washington, DC, where the brilliant, cultured diplomat became a personal favorite of President Roosevelt.
    His older brother Nesuhi had taken nine-year-old Ahmet to see Cab Calloway and his Orchestra in London and, shortly after that, the Duke Ellington band. By the time the two young men landed in Washington with their family in 1934, they were thoroughly indoctrinated, with visions dancing in their heads of black men in tuxedos and their bright, shiny, brassy music. They combed black neighborhoods door-to-door looking for old 78 rpm records. They hosted Sundaybrunch jam sessions at the Turkish embassy, and a procession of jazz greats such as Lester Young and Sidney Bechet, highly amused at the invitation, waltzed through the elegant quarters when the Ertegun boys lived there. They presented jazz concerts outside the embassy—their first featured bluesman Leadbelly at the Washington Press Club.
    When the Erteguns’ father died in 1944, he was initially buried in Arlington National Cemetery, and after the war, his body was shipped home with great pomp and ceremony by President Truman on the USS Missouri , only months after the Japanese signed the surrender on her decks. Their mother and sister went with their father. Nesuhi had married a gal who owned a record store and was working for a jazz record company in Los Angeles. Ahmet moved to more humble surroundings in DC—no more limousines, servants, or cooks—and continued to study for a master’s degree in philosophy in the evenings. He sold the massive record collection he and his brother accumulated to plump up the small allowance his family could afford. During the day, he spent a lot of time sitting around Waxie Maxie’s, a record store around the corner from the Howard Theatre in the black section of town.
    These were Ahmet’s wilderness years, absorbing the business through osmosis while lounging around listening to records and doing nothing. Owner Max Silverman was a philosopher king who held forth on a wide array of topics. Ahmet took a second trip to the recording studio after Little Miss Cornshucks, upon meeting a potential partner in Maxie’s store, a square who put up the dough. Ahmet cut several sides with orchestra leader Boyd Raeburn, who ran a progressive big band working sort of a Stravinsky-meets-Kenton wrinkle. Again Ahmet had no plans for the recordings—he