Bob Thiele is best remembered for his years as the artistic director and house producer of Impulse!. He took over from founder producer Creed Taylor in 1961 and stayed with the label until 1969, when he left to run his own Flying Dutchman Records. Thiele's tenure at Impulse! was its most glorious period, when Thiele curated a body of work—daring and ambitious, catching the zeitgeist but also timeless—which has been matched by only a tiny number of other labels.

Flying Dutchman was a smaller affair, operating on a small fraction of the resources available to Impulse!, which during Thiele's time was bankrolled by the massive ABC-Paramount Record Corporation. Thiele sold up to RCA in 1976, but during Flying Dutchman's six years of independent existence, he built up a catalogue which, while it may not have been as large as that of Impulse!, equalled it in quality.

Thiele's name is synonymous with