Alan Bates

August 26, 1925 – January 30, 2023.
UK jazz producer and music executive. In 1960, he co-founded Interdisc, which imported Blue Note and Riverside Records albums into the UK. He worked for Riverside in Paris to improve the American label's distribution in Europe, but after the label went bankrupt he was asked by Philips Phonografische Industrie to supervise jazz recordings for its Fontana label and later joined Polydor. Bates launched Black Lion Records in 1968 in London (which included the Freedom subsidiary) and later re-launched the Candid label which he acquired in 1989. He signed artists like Stacey Kent or Jamie Cullum.