About a week ago I was watching audiophile and jazz critic Ken Micallef’s YouTube video on the new Tone Poet reissue of John Coltrane’s classic album Blue Train, and suddenly my name came up. As if that weren’t flattering enough, I got a message from Ken a couple days later with a request for him to interview me. We arranged for him to visit me at my apartment in Queens and the date was set.

I had a really terrific time with Ken. Although I have found that Ken has an online reputation for being opinionated and perhaps a bit controversial (kind of like me maybe), in real life I found him to be extremely patient, open-minded, attentive, and genuinely inquisitive. It was an honor and privilege to have a larger platform like his to speak about some topics that are near and dear to me like jazz collecting and preserving engineer Rudy Van Gelder’s legacy.