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 Booker Ervin, John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk, Sonny Rollins, Art Blakey, Lee Morgan, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Horace Silver, Herbie Hancock, Grant Green and George Benson.

His uncle, for whom Rudy was named, had been the drummer for Ted Lewis's band in the mid-1930s.

During his high school years, Van Gelder took trumpet lessons and played in the school band.

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.

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.

In the 1950s, Van Gelder performed engineering and mastering for the classical label Vox Records.

He worked with many different record companies, and recorded almost every session on Blue Note Records from 1953 to 1967.

He worked on albums including John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, Miles Davis's Walkin', Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage, Sonny Rollins's Saxophone Colossus, and Horace Silver's Song for My Father.

He is regarded as one of the most influential engineers in jazz.

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.

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

Thereafter, Van Gelder maintained an optometry practice in Teaneck, New Jersey until 1959 when he made the transition to full-time recording engineer.

In the evenings after work, Van Gelder recorded local musicians who wanted 78-rpm recordings of their work.

He became a full-time recording engineer in 1959.

In 1959, he moved the Van Gelder Studio to a larger purpose-built facility in Englewood Cliffs, a few miles southeast of the original location.

An obituarist in the London Daily Telegraph wrote of "Van Gelder's extreme fastidiousness" as an engineer, and his insistence on "no food or drink in the studio, and on no account was anyone to touch a microphone. He himself always wore gloves when handling equipment".

Though his output slowed, Van Gelder remained active as a recording engineer into the new century.

In the late 1990s, he worked as a recording engineer for some of the songs featured in the soundtracks for the Japanese anime series Cowboy Bebop.

He told Audio magazine in 1995:

"The biggest distorter is the LP itself. I've made thousands of LP masters. I used to make 17 a day, with two lathes going simultaneously, and I'm glad to see the LP go. As far as I'm concerned, good riddance. It was a constant battle to try to make that music sound the way it should. It was never any good. And if people don't like what they hear in digital, they should blame the engineer who did it. Blame the mastering house. Blame the mixing engineer. That's why some digital recordings sound terrible, and I'm not denying that they do, but don't blame the medium."

From 1999, he remastered the analog Blue Note recordings he made several decades earlier into 24-bit digital recordings in its RVG Edition series.

He was positive about the switch from analog to digital technology.

"When I first started, I was interested in improving the quality of the playback equipment I had," Van Gelder commented in 2005; "I never was really happy with what I heard. I always assumed the records made by the big companies sounded better than what I could reproduce. So that's how I got interested in the process. I acquired everything I could to play back audio: speakers, turntables, amplifiers".

Van Gelder continued to reside in Englewood Cliffs until his death on August 25, 2016.

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, clarity, realism, warmth and presence.

Van Gelder pioneered use of close miking techniques, peak limiting, and tape saturation to imbue the music with an added sense of immediacy.

He also demonstrated a commitment to superior signal-to-noise ratio while recording and mastering, allowing Van Gelder to achieve greater volume on his LPs and minimize tape hiss and vinyl surface noise.

Van Gelder was unusual compared to other recording engineers of the time insofar as he enjoyed ownership of the entire recording and post-recording process (excepting the pressing of the records themselves).

This control gave Van Gelder the opportunity to ensure that the final records reflected the sound of the original tape recording, with each record bearing his hallmark: a small 'RVG' inscribed into the run-out area.

Though instrumental in developing the so-called 'Blue Note sound', Van Gelder's approach was often dictated by the production personnel with whom he worked.

Blue Note's Alfred Lion worked closely with Van Gelder during sessions:

"Alfred knew exactly what he wanted to hear. He communicated it to me and I got it for him technically. He was amazing in what he heard and how he would patiently draw it out of me."