Rudy Van Gelder, the artisan of sound 💫

 

Rudy Van Gelder (born November 2, 1924, in Jersey City) was the engineer who recorded over several thousand sessions for such artists as 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. He worked with many different record companies, recording almost every session for Blue Note Records from 1953 to 1967. 

Among the albums he recorded were "A Love Supreme," "Walkin'," "Maiden Voyage," "Saxophone Colossus," and "Song For My Father." He began in 1946 by recording local musicians in his free time, at his parents' house in Hackensack, in which a control room was built adjacent to the living room that served as the musicians' performing area. 

A friend introduced him to Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records in 1953. In the 1950s, he performed engineering and mastering for classical label Vox Records. He became a full-time recording engineer in 1959, moving Van Gelder Studio to a larger purpose-built facility in Englewood Cliffs.  

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." From 1999, he remastered the analog Blue Note recordings he had made several decades earlier into 24-bit digital recordings in its RVG Edition series. He died August 25, 2016, at his home in Englewood Cliffs.

(Photo: Rudy Van Gelder. Source: Creed Taylor Produced)