that certain something; Ahmet Ertegun gave us jazz, R&B, and rock 'n' roll; Beau Brummell invented trousers.(In memoriam)

The supremely elegant Ahmet Ertegun, who founded Atlantic Records 60 years ago, was the improbable emperor of rock 'n' roll. Passionate about the blues since his childhood in Paris and London, where his father was the Turkish ambassador, at sixteen he held the first integrated jazz concerts in Washington, D.C., at the embassy. Bette Midler narrates the extraordinary story of the privileged foreigner who created American music in Atlantic Records: The House That Ahmet Built, on the PBS American Masters series. He recorded Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and made their careers; among his first white artists were the songwriters Leiber and Stoller and Bobby Darin. Then came the Rolling Stones, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Midler, Eric Clapton, and Led Zeppelin. Ertegun gave a young man named David Geffen his big break. As Taylor Hackford says in the film, Atlantic was "the most important independent record label in history."

And while what he produced gave successive generations the music to live by, his own charismatic demeanor made the ragged liberties of rock-'n'-roll chic. Ahmet Ertegun and his wife, Mica, a decorator who had fled the Communist takeover of her native Romania in a train with the royal family, embodied an informed, sybaritic, classy attitude that joined high and low in a kind of unimpeachable cool. Asked in the film if he ever did drugs, Ahmet says, "Well-I inhaled." Talking about his infidelities, Mica says, "I think it's unnatural to live your whole life with one person, frankly. I mean, it's very American." In ...