The Jazz Recordings of Rudy Van Gelder
Ask any jazz fan to name a recording engineer and you can bet the answer will come back: Rudy Van Gelder. Over the last half-century this reclusive craftsman has recorded more classic jazz albums by far than any other engineer, and the scope of his accomplishments is so extensive as to be almost beyond belief. Long regarded as the dean of jazz recording engineers, Van Gelder is perhaps most famous for creating the legendary “Blue Note sound.” Not long after they began appearing in the early 1950s, his recordings for that label, distinguished by their warmth, clarity, and sonic precision, set a new standard for the sound of small group jazz on record, a standard against which almost all subsequent efforts were measured.
Over the years, in addition to his long association with Blue Note, Van Gelder has recorded thousands of sessions for numerous other labels including Prestige, Savoy, Bethlehem, ABC-Paramount, Verve, Impulse, A&M, CTI, Milestone, Muse, Criss Cross, Uptown, Reservoir, High Note and Sharp Nine. While the sheer volume and variety of this output is staggering to contemplate, when we realize how many of these recordings have come to be regarded as classics, the magnitude of Van Gelder’s accomplishment becomes even more impressive.
It is not just the quantity of Van Gelder’s work that astounds us, it is also the quality of his recorded legacy. His output is not just massive — much of it is magnificent. Among the countless albums he has recorded, literally hundreds qualify as classic examples of the modern jazz genre, quintessential components in the collection of any serious jazz fan, and found on almost everyone’s “desert island list.”
Consider just a few of the landmark albums Van Gelder has engineered: Miles Davis (Walkin’, Bags’ Groove, Cookin’, Workin’, Steamin’, Relaxin’); Sonny Rollins (Tenor Madness, Saxophone Colossus); John Coltrane (Blue Train, A Love Supreme); Cannonball Adderley (Somethin’ Else); Lee Morgan (The Sidewinder); Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers (Moanin’); Horace Silver (Blowin’ the Blues Away, Song For My Father); Eric Dolphy (Out to Lunch); Herbie Hancock (Maiden Voyage); Freddie Hubbard (Red Clay); Quincy Jones (Walking in Space); the list seems endless.
Nor has his expertise been limited to the confines of his studio. Van Gelder was one of the first of his era to accept the challenge of remote recordings and has taken his equipment to numerous nightclubs, concert halls, college campuses and other venues in order to preserve many of the most historic and treasured moments in jazz, including: Art Blakey Quintet (A Night at Birdland); Charles Mingus (At the Cafe Bohemia); John Coltrane (“Live” at the Village Vanguard); Jimmy Smith (Groovin’ at Small’s Paradise); Bill Evans (At Town Hall); Eric Dolphy (At the Five Spot); Wes Montgomery & Wynton Kelly (Smokin’ at the Half Note); Stanley Turrentine (Up at Minton’s) — again, the list rolls on.
Strangely, despite his exalted reputation within the jazz community, the full scope of Van Gelder’s work has never been accurately documented. To make matters, worse, much of the information currently in print is incorrect. This is largely due to the fact that record companies frequently failed to list engineering credits on album jackets. While liner notes might include the city in which a session had taken place, they commonly omitted the studio or engineer. To further confuse the situation, in most discographies the location of many sessions recorded at Van Gelder’s New Jersey studio (first in Hackensack, later in Englewood Cliffs) is simply listed as “New York City.”
This incorrect information is still being perpetuated in much of the published literature and in many of the otherwise reliable sources on the Internet. Errors continue to be disseminated on the labels of reissued sessions. (While every respectable jazz fan knows that the famous Christmas Eve session with Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk took place in Van Gelder’s Hackensack living room, the CD’s label still proclaims it to have been recorded in New York City.)
Conversely, some sessions done in New York studios or elsewhere have been erroneously listed as Van Gelder’s. On the Miles Davis album Collector’s Items, to cite only one example, all seven tracks are credited to Van Gelder, while only the final three were actually recorded in Hackensack. (Incidentally, the difference in sound quality between these two early fifties sessions is dramatic, and demonstrates clearly the superiority of Van Gelder’s work at the time.)
With the exception of his excellent volume dealing with the Blue Note label even the respected discographies of Michel Ruppli are of little help in establishing Van Gelder’s involvement with a given session. In his volumes on the Prestige, Savoy and Clef/Verve labels, Ruppli almost without exception fails to name studios or list engineer credits. Thus, once again, Van Gelder’s output is lumped with that of all other New York-area studios. Likewise the huge and highly anticipated jazz discography being compiled by Tom Lord, for all its completeness (thus far 24 of the projected 26 volumes have been published), in many cases simply repeats the errors of previous annotators.
While jazz is the field in which Van Gelder has achieved his greatest recognition, he has also recorded innumerable sessions of other types of music, and even a few in the genre of the spoken word. In the interest of completeness and chronological continuity, I have included as many of these as I have been able to document.
What follows, then, is a first attempt to set the record straight and provide a comprehensive and accurate listing of Rudy Van Gelder’s recordings. However, because it is still incomplete, the present document must be viewed as a work in progress. While identifying, dating, and confirming the majority of earlier sessions has been a relatively straightforward procedure, nailing down details about many sessions that occurred after the advent of multi-track recording has been a much more difficult task. The discographer’s job was a lot easier when musicians all had to be in the same place at the same time in order to make a recording. Once it became possible to have a single title include performances by different musicians in different locations recorded on different days, details about individual sessions became harder to ferret out. This problem is most vexing with albums that obviously feature a lot of overdubbing by many musicians on multiple dates, but that simply say something like, “Recorded in August and October, 1974.” It is hoped that access to information held in certain company files and elsewhere will eventually help to clarify this situation.
Although the present volume contains listings for over 3,200 separate sessions, it is still far from the whole Van Gelder story. This dedicated and tireless perfectionist has continued recording prolifically up to the present time, and he remains the engineer of choice for many of today’s top jazz artists and producers. He will no doubt continue his excellent work well into the new millennium, adding even more precious links to the chain of jazz history.
Dan Skea c. 2001