RUDY VAN GELDER

Rudolph Van Gelder (November 2, 1924 - August 25, 2016) was an American recording engineer who specialized in jazz. Over more than half a century, he recorded several thousand sessions, with musicians including John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Horace Silver and Grant Green. He worked with many different record companies, and recorded almost every session on Blue Note Records from 1953 to 1967.

Van Gelder was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, his parents, Louis Van Gelder and the former Sarah Cohen, ran a women's clothing store in Passaic. His interest in microphones and electronics can be traced to a youthful enthusiasm for amateur radio. He was also a longtime jazz fan. His uncle, for whom Rudy was named, had been the drummer for Ted Lewis's band in the mid-1930s. Van Gelder took lessons on the trumpet. Van Gelder trained as an optometrist at Philadelphia's Pennsylvania College of Optometry because he did not think he could earn a living as a recording engineer. He received an O.D. degree from the institution in 1946. Thereafter, Van Gelder maintained an optometry practice in Teaneck, New Jersey until 1959.

Van Gelder recorded local musicians who wanted 78-rpm recordings..,

Of their work. From 1946, Van Gelder recorded in his parents' house in Hackensack, New Jersey, in which a control room was built adjacent to the living room, which served as the musicians' performing area. The dry acoustics of this working space were partly responsible for Van Gelder's inimitable recording aesthetic.

Van Gelder commented in 2005;

One of Van Gelder's friends, the baritone saxophonist Gil Mell, introduced him to Alfred Lion, a producer for Blue Note Records, in 1953.

Van Gelder was secretive about his recording methods, leaving fans and critics to speculate about his techniques. He would go as far as to move microphones when bands were being photographed in the studio. His recording techniques are often admired by his fans for their transparency, warmth and presence. Richard Cook called Van Gelder's characteristic method of recording and mixing the piano "as distinctive as the pianists' playing" itself. Blue Note president and producer Alfred Lion criticized Van Gelder for what Lion felt was his occasional overuse of reverb, and would jokingly refer to this trait as a "Rudy special" on tape boxes.

Despite his prominence in recording jazz, some artists avoided Van Gelder's studio. The bassist and composer Charles Mingus refused to record with him. Taking Leonard Feather's "blindfold test" in 1960, he said that Van Gelder "tries to change people's tones. I've seen him do it; I've seen him do it; I've seen him take Thad Jones and the way he sets him up at the mike, he can change the whole sound. That's why I never go to him; he ruined my bass sound".

The best Van Gelder recordings feature wonderful-sounding brass, bass walks, and cymbal shimmers, but one instrument he rarely got right was the piano, which, on most of his albums, sounds hooded. Some engineers suspect this was due to reflections over the piano, brought on by the shape and size of his parents' living room and, later, his studio. It may be significant, in this regard, that his best-sounding album (and one of his best musically too), Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch, does not feature a piano.

HE WAS POSITIVE ABOUT THE SWITCH FROM ANALOG TO DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY. HE TOLD AUDIO MAGAZINE IN 1995: