Rudy Van Gelder interview

[Waterfall-K]

Rudy Van Gelder, ενας απο τους σημαντικοτερους εν ζωη recording engineers, για πολλους ισως ο πλεον σημαντικος. Οταν εχεις ηχογραφησει o ιδιος στο στουντιο σου την...μιση Jazz, στην κυριολεξια, τοτε ναι, μπορει και να εισαι οντως ο σημαντικοτερος εν ζωη recording engineer. Ακολουθει μια πολυ ενδιαφερουσα συνεντευξη του απο το 2012.

 

 

Part 1/3

 

Rudy Van Gelder's name appears on more Jazz albums than any other engineer, producer or musician. In all Rudy has recorded thousands of records for Blue Note, Prestige, Impulse, Verve, A&M, CTI and other labels—which means he has been personally responsible for a sizable chunk of post-war jazz history. A large percentage of these historic jazz albums were recorded first at Rudy's parents' home in Hackensack, N.J. (1947-1959) and then at his studio in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. (1959-present).

 

Being able to spend a few hours recently in the middle of Rudy's famed Englewood Cliffs studio, talking about his career over chicken salad sandwiches, was a year in the making. Rudy is extremely private, and most interviews you read with him were actually done by email. Like most Jazz fans, Rudy is most comfortable in a darkened studio fussing over dials and sound than entertaining guests. But he made an exception.

 

Rudy’s many accomplishments and contributions include inventing techniques for capturing sound naturally in an age when most recording equipment wasn't up to the job, the creative placement of microphones, the early use of magnetic recording tape, a recording process that wasn't easily duplicated by other engineers, and turning his name into a brand that has been synonymous with Jazz itself ever since.

 

What’s the biggest misconception people have about you?

Some people think I'm a producer. I'm not. I'm a recording engineer. I don't hire the musicians nor do I come up with concepts for albums or how well musicians are playing. I'm there to capture the music at the time it's being created. This requires me to concentrate on the technical aspects of the recordings, which means the equipment and how the finished product is going to sound.

 

Where did you grow up?

I was born in Jersey City, N.J., on November 2, 1924. In high school I played the trumpet in the marching band—poorly, I might add. As a result, I was demoted to taking tickets at football games. But my passion for music remained. I listened to Jazz and big bands all the time on the radio at home. I also became a ham radio operator—my call letters were W2TMD. The ham radio started my fascination with all types of electronics.

 

Recording also was an early hobby, yes?

Yes. When I was 12 I ordered a home-recording device that came with a turntable and blank discs. I was fascinated by recorded sound.

 

What did you do after high school in the early ‘40s?

I attended the Pennsylvania College of Optometry in Philadelphia, which now is part of Salus University.

 

Eyeglasses?

[Laughs] I know. Optometry must sound like an odd choice for me now. But back in high school I wasn't very good at math. I felt that studying optometry would give me the mental discipline I needed and a steady income after I graduated.

 

Jimmy Smith - The Cat (1964)

 

What was the big turning point for you from vision to sound?

One day during my college years, my friends and I went to visit WCAU, a Philadelphia radio station. Back then it was a CBS network station, and the environment there was very serious and precise. I don’t recall why we went, but I do remember being in the control room while they were on the air.

 

What happened?

A powerful feeling swept over me. The music, the equipment's design, the seriousness of the place—I knew I wanted to spend my career in that type of environment.

 

What do you think it was about the radio studio that won you over?

The look of it, for one. I loved the imposing look of the electronic equipment and how everything was meticulously set up. Radio equipment looks very serious. I also loved the equipment's design, which was modern and urgent. Back then the equipment's look reflected the excitement of music and the airwaves. Actually, the control room you see here today looks very much like the one I visited that day at WCAU.

 

So you graduated from college as an optometrist, yes? What did you do?

I immediately opened an office in Teaneck, N.J. Most people aren't aware that I worked as an optometrist there for 13 years—until 1959. Early on, I worked at my office during the day and in the evening I recorded local musicians and singers who wanted a 78-rpm of their efforts.

 

What made you most excited—the gear or the music?

My ambition from the start as a recording engineer was to capture and reproduce the music better than other engineers at the time. I was driven to make the music sound closer to the way it sounded in the studio. This was a constant struggle—to get electronics to accurately capture the human spirit.

 

What type of recording equipment was particularly exciting?

The microphones. I loved the way they looked. They were a symbol of everything I loved about recording studios. I loved all microphones. It was almost an obsession. When I'd see photos of jazz musicians recording or performing, I found myself looking at the mikes, not them. The microphone became everything for me.

 

Is this because that’s the very point where music—the art itself—is captured and translated into electrical pulses?

Well put. That’s it exactly.

 

Was getting the sound you wanted difficult in the late 1940s?

In those days—even into the 1950s—the quality of the equipment and records themselves couldn't keep up with what musicians were playing live. I had to experiment to find the best way to set up musicians and microphones so the sound would be as warm and as realistic as possible.

 

Herbie Hancock - Empyrean Isles (1964)

 

How did you learn what you needed to know?

I had to find out what type of equipment was being used, how it was being used and the results. When I’d buy records, I’d ask the people who made the ones I liked most what kind of microphones they used. The microphones mattered.

 

So when you started out, how were you making recordings?

I began by recording local musicians and singers who wanted a 78rpm of their efforts. I was making audio recordings on aluminum lacquer-coated discs that were then reproduced on 78rpm singles. I recorded organist Joe Mooney this way in 1949 and 1951.

 

What changed in the early 1950s that allowed you to attract bigger-name New York Jazz artists?

The introduction of magnetic recording tape. I was among the first engineers to experiment with it in the studio. Also, tape’s lower cost and improved flexibility—I could start and stop it, recording over it and so on—led me to try out new ways of recording.

 

When did your parents move into their Hackensack, N.J. home at 25 Prospect Ave.?

My father decided to build a home on a lot there in 1946. By then I was completely involved with recording local musicians who wanted to hear themselves on a 78rpm. When my father was having the blueprints done, I asked him if I could have a control room with a double glass window next to the living room. I wanted to perfect the techniques of contemporary music recording.

 

How many months of begging did it take?

None. My father agreed immediately. He knew how passionate I was about the music and the process of recording. Passion mattered to both my father and mother.

 

What did you tell your father—or the architect?

I asked that the living room be as large a space as possible, within the footprint of the house. My father’s architect decided to accomplish this by making the living room ceiling higher than the rest of the house, which made for great acoustics.

 

What was the house’s footprint like?

The house was U-shaped, with the bottom of the U facing the street. It was a modern, California-style house. If you viewed the house from the street, the bedrooms and control-room were in the wing on the right side. The living room/studio was in the center, and the the left wing housed the kitchen and dining room. Outside the dining room was an open patio.

 

Horace Silver - Blowin' The Blues Away (1959)

 

[Waterfall-K]

Part 2/3

 

What did your parents do for a living?

They worked all day running their own business—a women's clothing store in Passaic, N.J., which was about a half hour's drive. They often came home late to a recording session underway. I usually recorded in the afternoon, after I worked at my optometry office and before musicians had their night gigs.

 

How did your parents get into the house?

[Laughs] They soon added a separate entrance to the bedroom wing. They were always very supportive and encouraging of my recording activities. All of the musicians smoked at the time but my parents rarely complained. Just once I remember my mother leaving me a note asking me to tidy up better.

 

What about the neighbors?

I remember only one time a neighbor complaining. It was when I was still recording locally, before I recorded on a professional level. It was a hot summer day and the windows were all open. My friends were jamming. A neighbor, who turned out to be the principal of the Hackensack High School, complained.

 

Who designed the stamp that appeared on your master discs?

Oh that green image of my parents’ house and my studio? That was designed by Paul Bacon.

 

 

Paul Bacon, the great art director who designed Jazz album covers and later book covers?

Yes. I met Paul through Alfred Lion (co-founder of Blue Note Records). He thought the house added a certain modern touch.

 

How long did you live at your parents’ home?

For a few years. When I met my first wife Elva, she lived in Manhattan. So I moved into New York and commuted to Hackensack to work in my optometry office and record. Then in 1954 we moved into an apartment on Prospect Avenue near my parents’ home and studio. Elva was a classical pianist and instrumental in discovering the architect and architectural style we used for the Englewood Cliffs studio that we built in the late 1950s.

 

How did you learn about the recording equipment that was cutting edge in the early 1950s?

I always tried to find out what equipment was being used to get the results that I heard on recordings that I liked by other engineers. I was curious and always asked lots of questions and visited other studios, including Columbia’s 30th St. recording studio.

 

Why did you bother to keep practicing optometry?

To fund the purchase of my recording equipment. I never made much money while practicing optometry after college. I made more from making records. But everything I made as an optometrist went into new recording equipment and, eventually, into building my studio in Englewood Cliffs from the ground up.

 

Today, the Hackensack house on 25 Prospect Ave. is gone.

Yes, a health center is at the address now. My parents’ house was sold and then torn down when the current owner bought the land.

 

Does it make you sad that the house is no longer there?

A little. I suppose when you spend that much time recording history in a place, you sometimes wish you could at least drive by and see it.

 

If you're not a Jazz musician or a producer over age 70, then you are probably seeing the exterior of Rudy Van Gelder's recording studio at 25 Prospect Ave. in Hackensack, N.J. for the very first time (above). The studio where Rudy engineered hundreds of Jazz sessions between 1946 and 1959 was located in his parents' home, which has since been demolished. The studio was in the taller, center section of the Pueblo-modernist stucco residence.

 

I was warned not to ask you to explain why your recordings sound so much better than many other albums.

Good! [laughs]

 

But you did more than turn on the lights to the studio, yes?

People always ask me how I did it, and I rarely if ever discuss the technical side of things. But I'll tell you something most people don't know: In the late '40s, nearly everyone was using RCA and Western Electric microphones.

 

And you?

I used Neumann condenser microphones before anyone else did. I had the second Neumann ever sold in this country, in 1949. A studio in Manhattan [Reeves] got the first one. In the 1960s, Dr. Neumann had an office near my Englewood Cliffs studio, and a salesman brought him by to see me. It was a thrill for me. I think it was exciting for him, too.

 

What made Neumann microphones so special?

Their extreme sensitivity and warmth. They could capture sounds that other microphones couldn't. They had limits and defects, of course, but those issues were solved over time.

 

How you've placed the mikes matters. I’ve been told that you once wrapped a mike in foam and stuck it into the piano's tone hole to get the right sound.

All I'll say about that is, nothing is simple and everything is complex.

 

Who else was instrumental is helping you record at a higher level in Hackensack?

In the early ‘50s, I was helped by Rein Narma, a component-level engineer who worked at Gotham Audio. He built three consoles—one for my studio, one for Gotham and one for Les Paul. Later, he took a job with Ampex, the tape and electronics company in California, and then Fairchild.

 

Speaking of Ampex, magnetic tape was a huge studio revolution, wasn’t it?

Oh yes. You can’t overstate its importance. Tape was more cost efficient and revolutionary for most engineers in the late '40s and early '50s. It required a whole new series of techniques and disciplines as an engineer. I had always known what I wanted to hear, but the gear was too limited. With tape, I was able to move closer to my vision.

 

Grant Green - Grantstand (1961)

 

How did you discover tape so early?

My first tape machine was made by Presto, but it didn't operate well. The second one I bought was an Ampex Model 300 in 1949, because it was the best professional recording machine available. I bought it so early that the width of the tape gap was still experimental. When they narrowed the gap and standardized it, they sent me a new head assembly for free.

 

But why tape?

I felt it had a good chance of producing better results. And I fell in love with the design of the Ampex recorders. They were the most beautiful machines I had ever seen. Not a bolt or screw or anything visible. Just aluminum castings wrapped by stainless steel. I paid $2,000 at the time for mine—which was a lot of money back then [about $19,000 in today’s dollars].

 

How did you know how to use it?

There was a very thin manual. I learned how to use the recorder mostly by instinct. I'd try to work it, then talk to the company, try again, call them again. Little by little, I developed techniques and reflexes. Rein Narma also was very helpful.

 

How did you set it up and repair it?

When I made my purchase, Ampex was so young that the company didn't have a service department. They hired the staff of Westrex in New York to service the machines. Ampex’s main business was servicing movie projectors in theaters, so the techs often referred to magnetic recording tape as “film,” out of habit. The Westrex tech who set up my recorder knew very little about recording and even less about magnetic tape recording.

 

But it wasn't easy recording right off the bat, right?

That's right. It was impossible to record a full-length reel correctly. The levels would change from moment to moment. The preamplifiers were unstable with regard to the power supply.

 

Rudy Van Gelder and Alfred Lion

 

What did you do?

There were two ways to approach the problem: To use homemade accessories or deal with it. So I made sure I was constantly aware of the recording levels to make adjustments. Early on, I often had to stop the tape, make adjustments, then start again. Of course, with later models, these and other flaws were corrected.

 

Tape was relatively inexpensive?

Yes. The 3M Co. made the finest tape under the "Scotch" brand. "Agfa" in Europe also made magnetic tape that was in some ways superior to "Scotch" but in other ways inferior. I was among the first Jazz recording engineers to use tape. I stuck with the "Scotch" brand until the very end of analog recording in the 1990s.

 

Tape also removed concern about going over budget if there were many false starts, yes?

Sure. The beauty of tape is that it allowed for longer recording and mastering times. Three minutes had been the average duration of a 78rpm recording. But a single reel of 15ips magnetic tape lasted 30 minutes. Tape also allowed for cost-efficient stop-and-start recording. Plus, we could splice out bad notes or performances and exchange them for better ones, doing rather extensive editing.

 

Tape gave you a big advantage.

Fortunately for me, my interest in tape was ahead of the curve and well timed. Within a year or two in the '50s, more record companies began phasing out the 78rpm and switching over to 33 1/3 records, making tape essential for recording albums.

 

Which recording was your first for Blue Note?

In early 1952, a local producer named Gus Statiras came by the studio in Hackensack and said he wanted to record a baritone saxophonist named Gil Mellé for Gus's "Triumph" label. We recorded four tracks in March 1952 on tape.

 

What happened to the "Triumph" album?

It never came out, and I have no idea why not. But Gil was ambitious and brought the demo discs to Alfred Lion of Blue Note in New York. Alfred liked them. But when Alfred went to his engineer at WOR Studios to see if he could duplicate the natural sound on the first four tracks, the guy told him he didn't know how. He urged Alfred to see the person who had recorded the originals. So he did.

 

Mellé returned to Hackensack with Lion?

That’s right. There's the story Gil used to tell of going to Alfred and saying that I used tape to record, and Alfred responding in his German accent, "Vos ist tape?" But I wasn't there, so I have no idea. We recorded the second Gil Mellé session in January 1953.

 

Jutta Hipp - Jutta Hipp (1957)

 

Everything took off after that date, yes?

After that album [Gil Mellé - New Faces, New Sounds] came out on Blue Note, my Jazz recording dates picked up quickly. I was intensively organized, so I was able to engineer sessions comparatively faster than most other studios in New York. I had to be organized—I continued to work as an optometrist throughout my recordings in the 1950s. The results of my sessions always sounded more distinct and dimensional than many other sessions being done then in New York, even in mono.

 

You even did your own mastering—meaning taking the finished result on tape and producing the finished master disc for record-plant pressing.

I always wanted to be in control of the entire recording chain—from the initial recording through mastering. Why not? It had my name on it.

 

What do you remember about "A Night At Birdland" from February 1954 with Clifford Brown, Lou Donaldson, Horace Silver, Curly Russell and Art Blakey?

I remember I used a portable version of the Ampex recorder and brought all the Neumann microphones from my studio.

 

Was it tough to record Van Gelder style there?

Not really. Birdland was an ideal place for Art Blakey, from a recording and showbiz standpoint. Art had special battery-powered sticks that lit up. The audience would see only the sticks moving on a dark stage, flashing, with thunderous drumming. It was a wild scene, very dramatic. Setting up the microphones wasn't a problem.

 

Did people sense this was a new sound?

You knew immediately that the group was way more than just another bebop band. One time there was a big band playing opposite Blakey when I was recording. I remember remarking to someone that Blakey’s quintet was just as loud and forceful as the big band.

 

Did the music of the Horace Silver Quintet and Blakey's Jazz Messengers blow you away when you recorded them?

I like Horace Silver. I’ve always liked his music. We had fun doing those sessions. Horace's solos were always sprinkled with humorous quotes. They were a non-serious approach to Jazz, but at the highest level. I really like that—if that's what you mean by "blown away."

[Waterfall-K]

Part 3/3

 

How did you keep track of all of your recording sessions?

After Gil Mellé "New Faces, New Sounds" and "A Night At Birdland" were released on Blue Note, other record companies heard them and started calling me for recording time. So I assigned different days of the week to different labels. For example, Blue Note was always on Fridays.

This was to avoid confusion and organize my week so I could keep recording and working as an optometrist. I invested everything I made from my day job in new recording equipment.

 

So you had to operate with enormous efficiency, so everything ran like clockwork, yes?

Absolutely. Recording was always on my mind. I would spend hours setting up for the next day's recording session, carefully placing the cables, microphones and chairs for the musicians. When the producer and musicians arrived, we would begin recording almost immediately. I still do that today.

 

Was Alfred Lion tough to work with?

No, not at all. There was a certain sound quality that both Alfred and I liked. We never used the word "warmth" to describe it, though. That word only came up later, when comparisons were made between analog and digital recordings. We were warm from the beginning.

 

Was Lion rigid in terms of letting you do what you wanted?

Alfred was rigid about how he wanted Blue Note records to sound, so I just had to give him what he had in mind. Bob Weinstock of Prestige was more easygoing, so I'd experiment on his dates and use what I learned on the Blue Note sessions.

 

Lou Donaldson - Midnight Creeper (1968)

 

Were all of the ‘50s Prestige sessions recorded in Hackensack, N.J.?

Nearly every one of them—even though they typically put “New York” on the record jacket and later, in the discographies. Early on, I don’t think Bob Weinstock and other labels could accept that a town called Hackensack was a legitimate place to make high-end records.

 

What would happen after the producer said he had everything he needed?

After a session was over, the producer would take home the 7inch reels I made during the session for playback. He’d go home and make a decision about the takes to use for the album and which tracks would go on which sides and in which order.

 

What if an edit was necessary after a session due to a bad note on a great take or external noise?

In the case of Blue Note, Alfred Lion would insist that the musicians stay put until I made a successful edit. That really put me on the spot. I had to make the edit in front of everyone. And no one could leave until I got it right. That added to the tension. You know, I was cutting the one and only original tape with a razor blade. There were no backups—it was too expensive.On the other hand, if I made a good edit and they couldn't hear it on the playback, I got big applause. So it was fun, mostly. Making a perfect edit is a lot easier now than it was then—I had no "undo" button in those days.

 

How did you master the final tape?

Once the producer decided on the tracks, I'd splice those takes together in order on a separate reel. Then I’d transfer the final tape's audio to a lacquer master disc using a Scully lathe.

 

Jackie McLean - Jackie's Bag (1960)

 

How did that work?

I'd put a blank lacquer disc on the Scully’s platter and make adjustments for lines per inch and levels. Then I'd start the platter turning and lower the lathe’s stylus. The electrical impulses that were recorded on the tape would be amplified, moving through the coil within the cutter head. That produced the side-to-side motion of the sapphire stylus as it cut into the lacquer surface. Long story short, the cutter head made a wiggly groove on the surface of the lacquer. Once the disc was finished, I'd call the plating facility.

 

They would send someone out with a hand-made box with a spindle in the center. I would then mount the laquer platter in to the box, so that the surface couldn't  be touched by anything. Then I'd close the cover like a suitcase. The courier would take it to the plating facility in the Bronx. Someone told me the facility was an old abandoned swimming pool. This is where the nickel stampers were made. Those would be used to press the run of vinyl LPs. It was a big process.

 

How did you get such dimensional results in the studio?

When people talk about my albums, they often say the music has “space.” I tried to reproduce a sense of space in the overall sound picture. I used specific microphones located in places that allowed the musicians to sound as though they were playing from different locations in the room, which in reality they were. This created a sensation of dimension and depth. No one else was producing those kinds of results on equipment that was available at the time.

 

How did tape help?

The Ampex allowed me to record musicians live—during concerts and at clubs. I started doing that for Blue Note during the club date we just discussed. Alfred always liked the energy and excitement of a live performance at night, but it would take me three days to record it. I'd have to take apart the studio and pack all the equipment into my car, drive to the venue, set up the equipment, record the musicians, and then break down everything and bring it all back to my studio in Hackensack—before my next session.

 

OK, let me ask you a big one: Did you really wear white gloves while running around the studio?

[Laughs] That isn’t true. They were plain brown cotton work gloves.

 

Why did you wear them?

I was the guy doing everything—setting up the chairs, running the floor cables, setting the microphones, working the console. I didn't want to handle all of my fine, expensive equipment with dirty hands.

 

Art Blakey Quintet - A Night At Birdland (1954)

 

By the late 1950s, you and your wife Elva are living in an apartment in Hackensack near your parents' home, which doubled as your studio, yes?

That’s right. We knew we needed our own place that would also house a studio with much more space. I was booking larger and larger groups, and the living room of my parents' home was limiting what I could do.

 

What was your fantasy studio at the time?

I had the image of a larger-sized room, perhaps a small concert hall. I had been recording at my parents' house since the late 1940s and there were obvious limitations.

 

So you had saved enough to build a new home and studio?

Saved enough? [Laughs] I didn't have nearly enough savings to pay for the expansion. I took out a construction loan. I felt I could count on Alfred Lion, a steady client. Alfred, in 1957 or so, told me he had put me "on the team." As a result, I knew I could count on steady income from him.

 

You’re many things, but you’re not an architect. How did you plan the new studio?

My late wife Elva was a pianist who was tuned into the arts and architecture. One day we went to the Museum of Modern Art in New York and saw a model of a residential house built years earlier by Frank Lloyd Wright, who had just started work on the Guggenheim Museum in New York.

 

Which house was it?

Back in the mid-1940s, Wright and his students had developed a concept of making beautiful homes from humble, natural materials that ordinary people could afford. These were called Usonian houses. We loved the concept, since a recording studio has to be an organic space. Cost and esthetics were important, too, of course.

 

So you looked up Wright in the phone book?

[Laughs] Not quite. My wife did some research and found that David Henken had been one of the founders of the Usonia Homes project in the town of Mount Pleasant, N.Y. Homes there were made primarily of concrete, wood and other organic materials that blended into the landscape. David and I met and started talking. I knew what I needed acoustically for my studio. The goal was to compress my needs into what we could afford and create a timetable that would allow the studio to be completed relatively quickly.

 

Cannonball Adderley - Somethin' Else (1958)

 

But your budget was limited.

That’s right. The bigger the studio, the more it was going to cost. So we came to an agreement based on what I could handle financially. David drew up a design, and when he was finished with them in 1958, I had a nice set of plans but no one to build it.

 

What did you do?

One of David's employees, Armand Giglio, fell in love with the plans and agreed to develop them. Armand did all the interior carpentry in his own shop, but the roof was subcontracted to Timber Structures Inc. in Portland, Oregon. They had developed a new technique for producing arches, beams and rafters out of laminated hardwoods.

 

How were you handling your recording sessions while all of this was going on?

My wife and I lived in our Hackensack apartment, and I continued my optometry practice in Teaneck, N.J., on Cedar Lane. When it was time to record, I’d just walk up the hill from our apartment to my parents' house.

 

In short, what did the new studio’s design look like?

It called for a masonry base with five walls. The arches and rafters were to be made of Douglas fir with cedar tongue-and-groove decking. The wood in the rafters is uncoated. The way you see the wood now [pointing up] is the way it was shipped here from Portland.

 

 

The masonry walls don't look like masonry.

I know. They are custom-cast cinder blocks impregnated with a tan pigment. Each block was manufactured with the color through and through. The way sound reflects off the masonry and wood is the secret. The five walls allow the sound to move up into the rafters and back down without being trapped or muffled.

 

How did they get those arches up?

A crane about 90-feet tall had to hoist them and the rafters into place. They were bolted together at the top and joined at the bottom with a steel cable under the floor. This design allowed for a large recording space unencumbered by columns for support. In later years, after the studio was completed, David Henken came by with a lady friend. He said it was the best building he had ever designed.

 

Were the five wooden isolation booths in the studio here originally?

No. I installed those in the 1970s at the suggestion of producer Creed Taylor. They allow for complete separation of individual instruments—if such a setup is necessary. The separation meant we had greater flexibility when editing tape. If an artist played a better solo on a different track, the lesser one could be removed and the better one spliced in without worry about the rest of the instruments before the mastering process.

 

Donald Byrd - A New Perspective (1963)

 

When was the Englewood Cliffs studio completed?

In the late spring of 1959.

 

Who had the honor of being the first to record here?

That depends. The very first session here wasn’t a Jazz date. It was for Ward Botsford, a producer of classical and spoken recordings.

 

Whom did you record?

The West Point Cadet Glee Club. They came down in  two buses, did their calisthenics in the parking lot, then came into the studio and sang their songs. Ward told me, “I've always wanted to do this." He was referring to going to the nearby diner and ordering 100 cups of coffee.

 

What was the first Jazz session?

Ike Quebec for Blue Note on July 20, 1959. But it was a rough session. Three tracks were recorded. All went unreleased.

 

What was the first complete jazz session?

The invoice I wrote up on August 2, 1959 was for Walter Davis Jr.'s "Davis Cup" for Blue Note.

 

Did your parents live in the Hackensack house after you moved to your Englewood Cliffs home?

Yes, they lived there for the rest of their lives. The ownership of the house went out of my control, and the property changed hands. Then it was torn down to make room for the health center that’s there now.

 

Were you saddened when it was demolished?

Yes I was. It was where I had done some of my finest work.

 

Which albums do you remember most?

Probably the ones recorded early on by Miles Davis, Red Garland and Horace Silver. I also love Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Wave" with Urbie Green, which is perfection. And Walter Wanderley's "Summer Samba". I recorded all of Walter's U.S. recordings here. He was so much fun to listen to.

 

Antonio Carlos Jobim - Wave (1967)

 

And which recording was the most astonishing?

The most momentous recording of the 1960s for me was John Coltrane's "A Love Supreme". It was hypnotic. It was exciting. It was different. But I didn't have those views when it was recorded.

 

What do you mean?

I came to that realization only when I remastered the album for its digital reissue in 2002. You have to understand, I was busy making sure that the work was recorded perfectly. It wasn’t until I was working on updating the orignal master that I listened intently to the music.

 

So in many ways you have the same appreciation of that album that any listener does listening to the recording.

That’s right. Except that I recorded it...[Laughs]

 

Is the Organ that was used for most of the Hackensack and Englewood Cliffs recordings still here?

It is. Do you want to see it?

 

(Getting up, we walk to a far corner of the studio, through a forest of microphone stands. Rudy pulls a gray plastic covering off of the Organ)

 

Wow!

Yes, nearly everyone who recorded on Organ here for ABC, Blue Note and Prestige—including Ray Charles, Jimmy Smith, Jack McDuff, Jimmy McGriff and Charles Earland—used this instrument. Actually, people would probably be surprised to learn that it's a Hammond C3, not a B3.

 

Every session?

Most. Sometimes artists would bring their own Organ for one reason or another.

 

Where did you get it?

Savoy producer Ozzie Cadena bought it originally, and we used it for a large number of gospel albums he produced. He eventually sold it to me. Jimmy Smith called it "The Old Girl."

 

Dr. Lonnie Smith - Turning Point (1969)

 

How did you fare in the Rock era?

The music may have changed in the 1960s, but I kept recording. In the 1970s, Creed Taylor hired me exclusively for CTI for some years, five days a week. Until my wife Elva became ill. Then I closed the studio temporarily to care for her.

 

What was your mindset when recording all of these artists?

I've always worked for individual musicians and producers, along with labels. I still do. But I always try to work for the little guy and make it possible for him to compete with the big guys—technically and musically. That's the way I also handled my business. I could have expanded, hiring lots of people. But I decided to stay small.

 

Sitting here now, do you ever think back to all of the sessions that were held in this space—from Blue Note and Prestige to Impulse, Verve, A&M and CTI plus others?

Yes. Sometimes I sit here and think of all the great artists who came through and all the music that was made here. The musicians are still alive in my mind, just like the last time I saw them here. -

 

Rudy Van Gelder and interviewer Marc Myers

 

Marc Myers

JazzWax Blog

February 2012

[Shelter]

Πολύ ωραία συνέντευξη. Ευχαριστούμε

[nasokosm]

Μυθικο προσωπο  ο κος Gelder, οποιο παλιο δισκο Jazz  βρεις γραφει τ ονομα του στην ηχοληψια και με ηχο αξεπεραστο για την εποχη

[dimsonic]

ευχαριστούμε

[Dinosp]

Απολαυστικος Καταρρακτης (όπως και σε ολα του τα ποστ αυτής της εβδομάδας)

Ευχαριστούμε πολυ Κύριε Κώστα

:-* απο το νησί

[Waterfall-K]

Να'σαι καλα Dino. :) Σε ποιο νησι εισαι btw?

[Dinosp]

Κρήτη

Με άθλιο wifi αλλα υπέροχες ρακες

[Waterfall-K]

E, τι αλλο θες? ;D Καλα να περασεις και να ξεκουραστεις. 8)