Now, it may not be obvious from the snapshot, but the two ‘cats’ in the picture revolutionised the Jazz scene (which was THE scene) in the 1950’s.
The first large wave of Jewish émigrés to flee Nazi Germany arrived in the USA and, according to data from the US patent office, drove up invention rates by 33%. The primary areas of innovation were chemistry, physics and aeronautics.
But despite their sapient, bookish, dress and demeanour, Francis Wolff and Alfred Lion did not patent a novel route for synthesising haloanthraquinones, or indeed anything remotely of technological significance. They did, though, change the face of music through their record label, Blue Note records.
Their tale is a successful conflation of interests.
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