Show business biographies, whether dramas or documentaries, are always a compromise. Somehow a film presentation of an artist’s life rarely carries the same kick as the work that makes the artist worth profiling in the first place. This is especially true of music bios, even more so when the artist isn’t a performer. Nevertheless, documentary filmmaker Susan Steinberg gives it her best shot with “Atlantic Records: The House That Ahmet Built,” a documentary about the life of Ahmet Ertegun that airs tonight as part of PBS’s “American Masters” series.

As co-founder of Atlantic Records, Ertegun, who died in December at age 83, scouted and cultivated talent, wrote songs, supervised recording sessions, and shepherded what was initially one of many small-time impendent rhythm and blues record labels into the corporately owned supremacy that Atlantic enjoys today. A childhood spent living in embassies and attending international schools as a son of a Turkish ambassador, Munir Ertegun, would not seem on first glance to foretell a future in American music. Yet Ertegun, nurtured by his mother and especially his older brother Nesuhi, developed an appetite for popular music at an early age. When Munir was appointed Turkey’s ambassador to America, it was an answered prayer. “I was going to the land of cowboys and Indians, gangsters, beautiful showgirls,” Ertegun recalls on camera, “and of course the greatest thing — the land of jazz.”

In 1947, Ertegun and fellow record hound Herb Abramson borrowed $100,000 from Ertegun’s dentist and set up shop in New York under the banner of Atlantic Records.

Voice-over narration read by Bette Midler compares Ertegun’s belief that his own musical tastes would line up with the public’s to that of Hollywood aesthetes like Irving Thalberg. But an independent record label is a sketchy and necessarily low-overhead operation compared with a movie studio. For the first few years, the business affairs at Atlantic Records were conducted in the same nightclubs that Ertegun scoured for talent, and recording sessions were initially undertaken in his 56th Street apartment.

Eventually, Ertegun’s please-himself tastes, Abramson’s prior experience at small labels, and the addition of producer Tom Dowd to their ranks began to pay off. The label scored a hit in 1949 with Stick McGhee and His Buddies “Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee,” then went on to more chart success with “Miss Rhythm” Ruth Brown, Big Joe Turner, the Clovers, and other acts that Erte gun tailored with what author Peter Guralnick calls, in his indispensable book “Sweet Soul Music,” “a down-home sound with a sophisti cated twist.”

Atlantic made two key additions to its roster in the early 1950s: exec utive vice president Jerry Wexler who would be Ertegun’s partner (and eventual foil) into the ’70s, and Ray Charles, who would put the la bel on the map. Though Charles’s success was anything but overnight, when it came it was big His 1959 smash “What’d I Say” was Atlantic’s greatest success to date and though Charles soon left the label for ABC Records, Ertegun con tinued to combine taste, market savvy, and nerve to produce good records by the Drifters, question able records by Bobby Darin (At lantic’s first white act), and brilliant records by the Coasters in collabo ration with West Coast songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

“Atlantic Records: The House That Ahmet Built” has two great strengths. One is clips. The Clovers Ruth, Charles, Darin, and later Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, the Rolling Stones, Buffalo Springfield, and Led Zeppelin all make vintage cameos. Though their performances are edited down to the absolute limit of brevity, they confirm that Ertegun’s ear for talent was indeed second to none.

The other advantage is Ertegun himself. A show business raconteur par excellence, he recalls in oncamera interviews being chastised by jazz clarinetist Sidney Bechet for underage drinking (Bechet gave him a joint instead) and the payola scandals of the early ’60s with equal amusement and candor.

Ms. Steinberg’s creative decision to have many of these interview segments done in the company of other music and showbusiness luminaries is a mixed bag. Do we really need to see Ertegun condescendingly taken to task by one visitor for (quite rightly) suggesting that his portrayal in the Charles biopic “Ray” wasn’t particularly inspired or accurate?

The film begins with Kid Rock performing a biographical rap about Ertegun, then quickly proceeds to interview segments with Phil Collins and “Ray” director Taylor Hackford, so purists are advised to hang in there. The story unfolds and the interviews get better and better. Mick Jagger and Ertegun enjoy a particularly amusing rapport.

Ultimately, despite all the star power, “Atlantic Records: The House That Ahmet Built” feels a bit more like a commemorative video made for a tribute banquet than the passionately told story of one of the most influential men of the most globally influential decades of American popular culture. A picture may be worth a thousand words but after watching “Atlantic Records: The House That Ahmet Built” one is well advised to supplement the experience by reading a more detailed and unsentimental account like Mr. Guralnick’s book and listening to an appropriate stack of Atlantic records.