Atlantic Records

Rick Ross is taking his imprint, Maybach Music Group, from Warner Bros. to Atlantic Records. The rapper confirmed what he called "the biggest move of the year" on a Miami radio show earlier this week.  "I'm excited for this year we got coming up, man," he said. "This is really huge. MMG, we just merged with Atlantic Records. . . . We gonna leave it right there. I'm signed as a solo artist to Def Jam. And Meek Mill, Wale, we all MMG at the end of the day. " The move prompted rumors that Warner's urban music division would be shuttered.

Rick Ross is taking his imprint, Maybach Music Group, from Warner Bros. to Atlantic Records. The rapper confirmed what he called "the biggest move of the year" on a Miami radio show earlier this week.  "I'm excited for this year we got coming up, man," he said. "This is really huge. MMG, we just merged with Atlantic Records. . . . We gonna leave it right there. I'm signed as a solo artist to Def Jam. And Meek Mill, Wale, we all MMG at the end of the day. " The move prompted rumors that Warner's urban music division would be shuttered.

Warner Music Group has promoted Ron Shapiro and Craig Kallman to co-presidents of its Atlantic Records division, sources said. Shapiro started at Atlantic less than a decade ago as a publicist and is credited with helping transform unknown folk singer Jewel into an international star. Kallman founded famed dance-music label Big Beat in the 1980s and sold it to Atlantic a decade ago. The two executives will report to Atlantic Co-Chairmen Val Azzoli and Ahmet Ertegun.

For the final Record Rack of 2009, we take a look at some of the year's most prominent soundtracks and scores. "Avatar" James Horner (Atlantic Records) . 1/2 James Cameron's "Avatar" succeeds in introducing filmgoers to a new world; James Horner's score follows the filmmaker's lead. It's mood-setting music, at times full of wonder. Iridescent synths mix with woodwind instruments, and "The Bioluminescence of the Night" is New Age glitter. Horner avoids sci-fi and fantasy clichés -- choirs and sound effects whiz by, and orchestral flourishes descend into tribal nuances without warning.

Atlantic Records, reportedly miffed that triple Grammy nominee Marc Cohn was not asked to perform during the awards telecast on Tuesday in New York, plans to boycott the event, according to sources at the label and the National Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences, which presents the awards. "They just felt that with three such important nominations, he should have been part of the show," said a source who asked not to be identified.

Val Azzoli has been named executive vice president and general manager of Atlantic Records. Azzoli previously was Atlantic's senior vice president and general manager. Atlantic Records is part of Atlantic Group, a Time Warner unit. Separately, Atlantic Group named Tony O'Brien senior vice president and chief financial officer. O'Brien was previously vice president and controller of Atlantic Records, a division of Atlantic Group. O'Brien joined Atlantic Recording Corp.

Joel Dorn, a producer who won two consecutive Grammys for record of the year at Atlantic Records while helping to shape that label's distinctive jazz sound, died Monday after suffering a heart attack in New York. He was 65. "Joel bridged the worlds of jazz and pop with enormous skill and grace, never compromising the integrity of his artists and their music," Edgar Bronfman Jr., chairman and chief executive of the Warner Music Group, which includes Atlantic Records, said in a statement.

Ahmet Ertegun, the Turkish ambassador's son whose ear for the culture of black America would make his Atlantic Records a legendary fount of 20th century popular music, died Thursday. He was 83. Ertegun had slipped into a coma after suffering a head injury in an October fall backstage at a Rolling Stones show celebrating the 60th birthday of former President Clinton. Ertegun never recovered from the severe trauma of the injury, said Dr.

Promotion executive Andrea Gannis has been promoted to executive vice president of Time Warner's Atlantic Records label. Gannis, who has worked at Atlantic for nearly two decades, is credited with helping to transform such unconventional acts as Jewel into radio superstars.

Talk about pop contrasts. Three days after Irving Berlin, the most beloved American songwriter of the 20th Century, was honored at a black-tie affair at Carnegie Hall, a jeans and T-shirt crowd gathered Saturday at Madison Square Garden for a 13-hour concert starring heavy-metal pioneers Led Zeppelin.

Imagine this: By day, you're a typical businessman, working the 9 to 5. Your nights and weekends, however, are spent sharing a stage with nine other guys just like you -- performing a cappella songs in small venues while recording an album for Atlantic Records. That was the double life for the members of Straight No Chaser, an a cappella choir of 10 men who formed in 1996 during their college years at Indiana University. They say their pursuit in music was experimental at first.

Warner Music Group, in a sign that the struggling recorded music company is seeking to bolster its ranks of artists, has tapped producer Rob Cavallo for the newly created position of chief creative officer. In that role he will help develop acts across all of the Warner music labels including Atlantic, Asylum, Electra and Warner Bros. Cavallo, a multiple Grammy winner, has a strong track record with credits that include Green Day's "American Idiot," Kid Rock's "Rock N Roll Jesus" and most recently the top-10 release "Brand New Eyes" from the rock band Paramore.

Pervis Jackson, 70, the man behind the deep, rolling bass voice in a string of 1970s R&B hits by The Spinners, died Monday morning at Detroit Sinai-Grace Hospital after being diagnosed last week with brain and liver cancer after feeling ill for several weeks, said his wife, Claudreen Jackson. A native of the New Orleans area, he was one of the original five members of the group, which started out in the late 1950s singing doo-wop in Detroit. They worked under the Motown label in the 1960s but shot to stardom after moving on to Atlantic Records in the 1970s.

Rock 'n' roll has been generous in celebrating the importance that R&B vocal groups played in the music's birth. In this decade alone, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has inducted the Moonglows, the Flamingos and the Dells -- and that's on top of the earlier induction of the Drifters, the Coasters and more. But what about the Clovers, who had more R&B hits in the 1950s than any vocal group? The Washington, D.C.

Joel Dorn, a producer who won two consecutive Grammys for record of the year at Atlantic Records while helping to shape that label's distinctive jazz sound, died Monday after suffering a heart attack in New York. He was 65. "Joel bridged the worlds of jazz and pop with enormous skill and grace, never compromising the integrity of his artists and their music," Edgar Bronfman Jr., chairman and chief executive of the Warner Music Group, which includes Atlantic Records, said in a statement.

Singer Solomon Burke, keyboardist Keith Emerson and songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller are scheduled to speak tonight at a tribute to Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun at American Cinematheque's Mods & Rockers Film Festival. Ertegun, a native of Turkey, would have been 84 today. He died last December after suffering a head injury in October. The 7:30 p.m.

One way to convey Ahmet Ertegun's preeminence in the music business is to point out that he built Atlantic Records over the last five decades from a $10,000 investment into a multibillion-dollar operation. Another way is to name all the great artists who have been on the Atlantic roster, including nearly two dozen Rock and Roll Hall of Fame members, from Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin to the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin (see list, Page 72).

The roller-coaster ride at Warner Music Group took another sudden turn Friday with Danny Goldberg, president of Warner's Atlantic Records label, being offered the chairmanship of Warner Bros. Records. Goldberg declined to comment. But sources said the 44-year-old former manager of such top acts as Bonnie Raitt and Nirvana was likely to take the job--though he had not made a decision yet. The job offer follows a tumultuous power struggle at Time Warner Inc.'

Even if you didn't know a thing about Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet Ertegun, who died in December at 83, you'd instantly glean his monumental significance in the history of popular music from the footage of him in PBS' latest "American Masters" documentary. We see him laughing and swapping anecdotes with such rock, R&B and jazz titans as Mick Jagger, Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Robert Plant and Wynton Marsalis.

EDITORS' CHOICE: They're full of forced cheeriness and rife with the danger that you'll make a career-ending remark to your boss. In fact, many workers say they'd rather not go to company holiday parties. But that isn't stopping employers from holding the soirees. BUSINESS, C1 * The World South Korean is new U.N. chief South Korea's former foreign minister, Ban Ki-moon, is sworn in as the United Nations' eighth secretary-general.