Alfred Lion Interlude

[Steinski]

Alfred Lion

[Gil Melle]

"He realized that he was a catalyst

A walking, living human catalyst

You get him near an artist like Thelonius Monk or Bud Powell

And he instinctively knew that they had it down deep

And he could draw that ability out of them

And get it on a record

And he did it by not talking about record sales

And commercialism

And who the big names on the he never got into that

He was interested in you and your thoughts

And getting you to, uh

Have an unrestricted flow of your ideas in his recordings

Not many people have that

And he never made a mistake

Out of over a thousand records that Alfred produced

In the years that he had on Blue Note

Easily 900–950 of them are classics"