Alfred Lion

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