A week before I drove out to Rudy Van Gelder's Englewood Cliffs, N.J., studio to interview him for the Wall Street Journal (go here), I spoke to Creed Taylor. The famed producer who recorded his Impulse, Verve, A&M and CTI recordings at Rudy's studio had some sage advice: "Don’t wear wet shoes into the studio, and don’t ask questions about his recording techniques."
Got it. The day of the interview, it was pouring. So before I left, I grabbed a pair of clean, dry shoes. Then I picked up chicken salad sandwiches for Rudy, me and Maureen Sickler, Rudy's equally meticulous assistant for the past 26 years. When I arrived, I changed into my dry shoes, a move Rudy seemed to appreciate. Walking into that historic space is like entering the Pantheon or Notre Dame Cathedral. You actually can hear you're someplace special. [Pictured above: Rudy Van Gelder and assistant Maureen Sickler, wife of trumpeter-arranger Don Sickler; left, the Pantheon in Rome]
In Part 2 of my five-part conversation with Rudy, the all-business, Grammy-winning recording engineer talks about his parents' house in Hackensack, N.J., which also happened to double as his first studio:
JazzWax: When did your parents move into their Hackensack, N.J., home at 25 Prospect Ave.?
Rudy Van Gelder: My father decided to build a home on a lot there in 1946. By then I was completely involved with recording local musicians who wanted to hear themselves on a 78 rpm. When my father was having the blueprints done, I asked him if I could have a control room with a double glass window next to the living room. I wanted to perfect the techniques of contemporary music recording.
JW: How many months of begging did it take?
RVG: None. My father agreed immediately. He knew how passionate I was about the music and the process of recording. Passion mattered to both my father and mother.
JW: What did you tell your father—or the architect?
RVG: I asked that the living room be as large a space as possible, within the footprint of the house. My father’s architect decided to accomplish this by making the living room ceiling higher than the rest of the house, which made for great acoustics. [Photo of Max Roach in Rudy Van Gelder's parents' living room by Francis Wolff]
JW: What was the house’s footprint like?
RVG: The house was U-shaped, with the bottom of the U facing the street. It was a modern, California-style house. If you viewed the house from the street, the bedrooms and control-room were in the wing on the right side. The living room/studio was in the center, and the the left wing housed the kitchen and dining room. Outside the dining room was an open patio.
JW: What did you parents do for a living?
RVG: They worked all day running their own business—a women's clothing store in Passaic, N.J., which was about a half hour's drive. They often came home late to a recording session underway. I usually recorded in the afternoon, after I worked at my optometry office and before musicians had their night gigs.
JW: How did your parents get into the house?
RVG: [Laughs] They soon added a separate entrance to the bedroom wing. They were always very supportive and encouraging of my recording activities. All of the musicians smoked at the time but my parents rarely complained. Just once I remember my mother leaving me a note asking me to tidy up better.
JW: What about the neighbors?
RVG: I remember only one time a neighbor complaining. It was when I was still recording locally, before I recorded on a professional level. It was a hot summer day and the windows were all open. My friends were jamming. A neighbor, who turned out to be the principal of the Hackensack High School, complained.
JW: Who designed the stamp that appeared on your master discs?
RVG: Oh that green image of my parents’ house and my studio? That was designed by Paul Bacon.
JW: Paul Bacon, the great art director who designed jazz album covers and later book covers?
RVG: Yes. I met Paul through Alfred Lion. He thought the house added a certain modern touch. [Photo of Paul Bacon by Hank O'Neal]
JW: How long did you live at your parents’ home?
RVG: For a few years. When I met my first wife Elva, she lived in Manhattan. So I moved into New York and commuted to Hackensack to work in my optometry office and record. Then in 1954 we moved into an apartment on Prospect Avenue near my parents’ home and studio. Elva was a classical pianist and instrumental in discovering the architect and architectural style we used for the Englewood Cliffs studio that we built in the late 1950s.
JW: How did you learn about the recording equipment that was cutting edge in the early 1950s?
RVG: I always tried to find out what equipment was being used to get the results that I heard on recordings that I liked by other engineers. I was curious and always asked lots of questions and visited other studios, including Columbia’s 30th St. recording studio. [Pictured: The console at Columbia's 30th St. studio]
JW: Why did you bother to keep practicing optometry?
RVG: To fund the purchase of my recording equipment. I never made much money while practicing optometry after college. I made more from making records. But everything I made as an optometrist went into new recording equipment and, eventually, into building my studio in Englewood Cliffs from the ground up.
JW: Today, the Hackensack house on 25 Prospect Ave. is gone.
RVG: Yes, a health center is at the address now. My parents’ house was sold and then torn down when the current owner bought the land.
JW: Does it make you sad that the house is no longer there?
RVG: A little. I suppose when you spend that much time recording history in a place, you sometimes wish you could at least drive by and see it. [Pictured: 25 Prospect Ave. in Hackensack, N.J., now home to the Active Center for Health and Wellness.]
Tomorrow: Rudy talks about the recording technology at his Hackensack studio that made all those warm-sounding albums possible.
JazzWax note: A special thanks to Maureen and Don Sickler.
"Rudy, put this on the record ... *all* of it!" -- Miles Davis said this to RVG between the interrupted intro #1 and intro #2 after which followed one of the undoubted (and widely discussed) high points in the recorded history of jazz: "The Man I Love" (take 1) with Miles, Monk, Bags, Percy & Klook.
This is one of the most brilliantly sounding studio sessions anyway, disregarding the obvious tension between its participants which didn't affect the music though. On the contrary: It deepened the music; the quarrel (was it one?) seemed to have boosted the creativity.
One of those magic Miles/ RVG moments when everything seemed to fall into place. I enjoy every second of the album (pictured above), also the green one of course, containing the rest of the session: Both takes of Bags' Groove with *the* Monk solo of the 1950's.
The pressing I have came out on the Prestige sub label Metronome, Sweden/ Denmark; it's marked with RVG, and it has cost me "only" 50 DM when I purchased it in the very hot Summer in 1985.
It clearly belongs to my desert island picks.
I hope you will ask RVG about this and other incidents, Marc. And so, as you may imagine, can't wait for part 3.
Posted by: Brew | February 14, 2012 at 06:46 AM
Thanks very much for the excellent interview, and also for the insightful comment above. You are real jazz historians.
Posted by: Steven C. | February 14, 2012 at 12:01 PM
Marc, this is fantastic. Mr. Van Gelder's acceptance presentation at the Grammys was precise, classy and understated, exactly like a good recording engineer should be.
The top photo shows some top-quality 1950's audio gear. The speaker is an Altec corner cabinet, probably containing an Altec 604 or similar speaker. In the rack you have an Altec 127 amplifier below the patchbay, probably for the monitor speaker based on their proximity. You have in the top of the rack an HP 200 oscillator and what looks like a Daven powered VU meter (to test various things in the studio, make sure they are putting out the level they should be). Two Ampex 300 full-track tape recorders. I can't tell exactly what's in the left rack, but I noticed the lathe is behind Mr. Van Gelder. So, the Altec 127 amp may be the disk-cutting amplifier (this unit, the 127B version, was commonly used to drive a mono cutting lathe). So the amplifier for the monitor speaker may be in the rack to the left. We don't see the mixing console, but I assume it's a typical 1950's design. Based on the amount of distortion we hear on drums and pianos on some RVG recordings of that era, I'd suggest the mixing console had microphone preamps, which were sometimes overloaded by the high-output European condenser mics in front of hard-playing musicians, shown in some of the Blue Note photos of that era. This is all speculation, though, just one man's opinion.
The lower photo, I think, shows that rack that's to the left in the upper photo, it's to the right in the lower photo. Mr. Van Gelder is leaning on what looks like a Scully cutting lathe. In that rack may be one of the big Altec power amps of that era, I can't tell for sure. If it is, my bet is that it is the lathe-driver amp and the 127 is the monitor amp. That also may be a Gotham disk-cutting amplifier, I just can't tell from that photo. Hopefully others will weigh in. No matter what, it's a top-drawer setup for the mid-50's. -- Tom
Posted by: Tom | February 14, 2012 at 09:18 PM
Exellent interview, indeed. Thanks so much, frank herzberg
Posted by: Frank Herzberg | February 18, 2012 at 06:41 PM