Alfred Lion
Alfred Lion · Arts & Literature
Berlin-born Jewish refugee who founded Blue Note Records (1939), the most storied label in jazz — Monk, Blakey, Silver, Bechet.
21 avril 1908, Berlin, Allemagne — 2 février 1987, Poway, Californie, États-Unis
Berlin, New York
Alfred Lion is recognized among Jewish contributors to Arts & Literature — Berlin-born Jewish refugee who founded Blue Note Records (1939), the most storied label in jazz — Monk, Blakey, Silver, Bechet.
Berlin
Alfred Lion was born Alfred Löw on 21 April 1908 in the Schöneberg district of Berlin, and raised in a Jewish family. He heard jazz as a boy and never recovered; he tried America in 1926, worked in South America from 1933 to 1938 while Germany darkened, and settled in New York in 1938.
Blue Note
In January 1939 he founded Blue Note Records with the writer Max Margulis: at the first session, on 6 January, he recorded the boogie-woogie pianists Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis. His Berlin childhood friend Francis Wolff joined him within the year, and together the two refugees recorded Sidney Bechet, Thelonious Monk, Art Blakey, Horace Silver and Andrew Hill — the label that let musicians rehearse on paid time, and put their portraits on its covers.
The legacy
Lion sold Blue Note to Liberty Records in 1965 and retired in 1967. He died of heart failure on 2 February 1987 in Poway, California, at seventy-eight — and the label the Berlin refugee built remains the most storied name in jazz.
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Source: Wikipedia
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Berlin-born Jewish refugee who founded Blue Note Records (1939), the most storied label in jazz — Monk, Blakey, Silver, Bechet.
Source: Wikipedia
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