מזל טוב ל- רודי וואן גלדר, נולד היום לפני- 90 שנה.
מאמר קצר על האיש מאחורי חלק גדול מההקלטות המופלאות של הג'אז.
(לא מצליח/יודע אך לעשות יישור לשמאל...).
The Man That Made Jazz Sound Hip
If Reid Miles’s iconic album designs define the Blue Note look then it is Rudy Van Gelder’s brilliant engineering skills that give the label’s recordings its distinctive sound. But Rudy Van Gelder did not solely work for Blue Note, he was an engineer for hire and his work for Prestige on Miles Davis’s 1950’s sessions produced some of his finest work, as it did on John Coltrane recordings for the same label.
Van Gelder’s first session for Blue Note was in January 1953 with saxophonist and composer Gil Melle, who has the distinction of bringing Van Gelder to Alfred Lion’s attention. Even these very early sessions just take Blue Note’s records to an entirely different level, and this despite the fact that Van Gelder’s studio was in the living room of his parent’s house.
According to Blue Note producer, Michael Cuscuna, the concept of a studio in Van Gelder’s parent’s living room was not as outrageous as it sounds: ‘They were building a new house. Rudy had been doing some recording with a makeshift set-up, and he said he really wanted to build a recording studio. So, in the living room, they built all kinds of alcoves, nooks, and little archways that they designed because Rudy had ideas for them accoustically. At the end of the living room, he built a control room with soundproof glass. So it was professional.’
The Hackensack living-room studio of Rudy Van Gelder gave so many a distinctive sound, the kind that makes you feel as if it was recorded just a few minutes before you hear it, almost as though it is in the room next door. As Van Gelder commented many years later, ‘All I can tell you is that when I achieved what I thought the musicians were trying to do, the sound sort of bloomed. When it’s right, everything is beautiful.’
“Rudy’s a very knowledgeable and soulful person. He’s not like some – they call them ‘needle noses’ – they just look at the needle on the meter.” – Alfred Lion.
In July 1959, there was a significant change for the label: a new state-of-the-art studio in nearby Englewood Cliffs replaced Rudy Van Gelder’s ‘living-room’ studio in Prospect Avenue, Hackensack. Van Gelder had outgrown the old space and in 1957 had begun planning for a new one. He took inspiration from the work of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose designs and large-scale models he and his wife had admired at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Englewood cliffs
Wright and a group of architects had come up with the concept of Usonian houses – beautiful yet affordable homes built from inexpensive materials in his trademark organic style. A member of the Usonia group, David Henken had built some houses in nearby Mount Pleasant. He met Van Gelder and they soon began talking about building a home and studio at a price Van Gelder could afford.
By the end of 1958 and with plans drawn up, through Henken, Van Gelder found a builder who took on much of the carpentry for the project, including the 39-foot-high, beamed studio roof. This cathedral-like structure was built in Portland Oregon then shipped to New Jersey where a 90-foot crane lowered it into place.
Ira Gitler describes the new studio in his liner notes to the Prestige album, The Space Book by Booker Ervin: ‘In the high-domed, wooden-beamed, brick-tiled, spare modernity of Rudy Van Gelder’s studio, one can get a feeling akin to religion; a non-sectarian, non-organized religion temple of music in which the sound and the spirit can seemingly soar unimpeded.’ In fact the tiles weren’t brick at all, but cinder blocks impregnated with tan colouring.
There is hardly a jazz artist who did not benefit from Van Gelder’s skills, whether it was guitarists like Wes Montgomery, Grant Green or Kenny Burrell, or pianists such as Bill Evans, Horace Silver and Herbie Hancock, or artists as diverse as Eric Dolphy, Jimmy Smith, Cannonball Adderley and Chet Baker, every one of them owes him for making their music sound just that little bit more special.
The sound that Rudy Van Gelder achieved on all his recordings is as hip as it is possible to get. With his knack of placing you in the room with the musicians he has defined what we think of as great jazz recordings. While there was technology involved, the buildings themselves, great musicians to work with, and producer’s like Alfred Lion who knew what they were trying to achieve, it is Van Gelder who supplied some indefinable ingredient that helped make magic.
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