Rudy Van Gelder: THE Sound of Jazz

Every jazz lover has encountered the name Rudy Van Gelder at least once in their life, if not a hundred times... He sadly passed away on the 25th of August 2016 in his home in New Jersey at the age of 91 as one of the greatest sound engineers of the 20th century. And yes, sound engineer, not ‘producer’, as he always made a point of correcting people. He worked on more than 2,000 jazz albums with incredible skill and precision, including works by legends like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Sonny Rollins, Wayne Shorter, Horace Silver, and pretty much the rest of the ‘jazzosphere’. Even longer is the list of artists and musicians that made use of his famous Englewood Cliffs studio in New Jersey, just across the river from Manhattan. Van Gelder is associated in one way or another with the majority of albums released by Blue Note Records, during the label’s golden age. He also worked extensively for other record houses, including Prestige, Savoy, Impulse! and even CTI - Creed Taylor’s fantastic label. As he would confess to The New York Times in 1988, “I think I’ve been associated with more records, technically, than anybody else in the history of the record business”.

Born in Jersey City in 1924, Rudy Van Gelder would begin by first learning the trumpet and instantly developed a passion for recording. At 12, he inherited a recorder which he would use to amuse himself by recording the performances of local amateur musicians. He became the radio technician for his high school, but despite his growing knack for audio, he didn’t immediately see it as his future. Instead, he pursued optometry. However, working as an optometrist for over a decade would not hold him back from following his passion for sound by night. He built his recording studio in the living room of his parents’ home in Hackensack. This small studio not only launched his career but also inspired Thelonious Monk to name a composition, “Hackensack,” in his honor. The turning point for Rudy Van Gelder was in 1952, when he joined forces with Alfred Lion and Blue Note. This marked the beginning of a revolutionary and intense collaboration between jazz’s most celebrated label and its soon-to-be most celebrated sound engineer. Later, with the help of his optometry income, Van Gelder built the now-legendary Englewood Cliffs studio, a space that would one day become synonymous with the golden age of jazz.

What came next for Rudy Van Gelder was nothing less than what came next for the history of jazz itself. A Love Supreme by John Coltrane, Walkin’ by Miles Davis, Maiden Voyage by Herbie Hancock, Somethin’ Else by Cannonball Adderley, The Sermon! by Jimmy Smith, Saxophone Colossus by Sonny Rollins, Song For My Father by Horace Silver, Speak No Evil by Wayne Shorter... all of these masterpieces were brought into being with the help of this meticulous technician who, according to legend, always worked with gloves so as not to damage his delicate equipment. Van Gelder was quite secretive about his working methods, but in 2012, he shared his philosophy in an interview with JazzWax: “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.” From 1999, Rudy Van Gelder would begin personally remastering his Blue Note collection, ensuring that his timeless recordings would continue to sound as vibrant and authentic as the day they were created.