November 2nd Birthday

Rudy Van Gelder

Born 2 November 1924. Rudy is an American recording engineer specializing in jazz music who is frequently regarded as one of the most important recording engineers in music history, Rudy is one of the legendary behind-the-scenes figures in jazz, recording several hundred jazz sessions, including many widely recognized as classics. Bringing an unprecedented clarity to jazz recording, Rudy has recorded many of the great names in the genre, including Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Joe Henderson, Grant Green, Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane, and many others. He worked with many record companies, but he is most closely associated with Blue Note Records, now a division of EMI.

Rudy’s recording techniques are often admired for the warmth and presence he brings to the end result. Some critics however have also expressed a distaste for the thin and recessed sound in the instruments, mainly the piano. Richard Cook for example noted that the manner in which Rudy recorded piano was often as distinctive as the pianists' playing. Blue Note president and producer Alfred Lion often noted that Rudy was sometimes a little heavy on the reverb and would jokingly note that on the tape box as a "Rudy special".

Rudy first recorded friends in his parents' Hackensack, New Jersey, living room, while working during the day as an optometrist. The house in Hackensack had been designed and built so that it could also be used as a recording studio. One of Rudy’s friends, baritone saxophonist Gil Melle, introduced him to Blue Note Records producer Alfred Lion around 1952. The meeting led to the start of a second career, and as a result, Van Gelder is closely associated with the Blue Note label.

In the summer of 1959, Rudy moved his operations to a larger studio in Englewood Cliffs, a few miles south east of the original location. The structure was inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and bore some resemblance to a chapel, with high ceilings and fine acoustics.



Rudy cookin' in the kitchen

In the mid-1950s, Monk composed a tribute to Rudy called "Hackensack." It was in Englewood Cliffs where John Coltrane recorded his legendary “A Love Supreme” album for Impulse! Records in 1964. Other labels, such as Verve Records, made use of the new facility while Blue Note and Prestige continued their associations with Van Gelder for several years.

In 1967, Alfred Lion retired from running Blue Note, and the company's owners, Liberty Records (from 1965), began to use other engineers more regularly. Prestige, too, had started to use other studios a few years earlier. Rudy remained active in music, most notably as the engineer for most of Creed Taylor's CTI Records releases, a series of proto-smooth jazz albums that were financially successful but not always well-received by critics.

Though his output slowed, Rudy still remains active as a recording engineer. Since 1999, he has been busy remastering the analog Blue Note recordings he made several decades ago into 24-bit digital recordings in its ongoing RVG Edition series, and also for a similar series of re-masters featuring some of the Prestige albums he recorded for its current owners, Concord Records.

If anyone is interested, you can find another short bio as well as an interview at the “National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters” website.

Cool man…..very cool.