On August 2, 1959, Rudy Van Gelder opened his newly built Englewood Cliffs, N.J., recording studio. It was an imposing, almost church-like space far different from where he had begun making records years earlier. Between 1952 and August 1959, Rudy recorded jazz albums for Blue Note, Savoy and other labels in a soundproofed room at his parents modernist white-stucco home a few miles away in Hackensack. The first album he recorded in Hackensack was the 10-inch Gil Melle Quintet/Sextet for Blue Note. The room Rudy used is featured in many of Francis Wolff's photos and featured closed Venetian blinds as a backdrop to jazz musicians at ease between takes in the dead of night. [Photo above of Walter Davis Jr. at Rudy Van Gelder's Hackensack studio by Francis Wolff (c) Mosaic Images]
Here's how I described the Englewood Cliffs space after a visit for my Wall Street Journal profile of Rudy in 2012: "Inside the studio, the butterscotch-hued, cathedral-like space features a vaulted ceiling made of laminated Douglas-fir arches and cedar planks, giving the room a Scandinavian feel. Snap your fingers or talk, and the sound appears to hang in the air momentarily, as if the rafters were evaluating the sonic quality before letting it go."
The idea for the new house and studio's unusual design (above) came to Rudy in 1954, when he moved out of his parents home and into a nearby apartment with his wife. A museum exhibit in New York on Usonian architecture gave the couple an idea. "The image I had in mind was a small concert hall," Mr. Van Gelder told me. Then came a meeting with David Henken, a Usonian architect and student of Frank Lloyd Wright. Henken designed plans for Rudy, and Armand Giglio, one of Henken's developers, built the studio on a wooded lot in Englewood Cliffs that also featured their home.
The first album Rudy recorded at the new studio was Walter Davis Jr.'s Davis Cup. The Blue Note record featured Donald Byrd (tp), Jackie McLean (as), Walter Davis, Jr. (p), Sam Jones (b) and Art Taylor (d). All of the songs were composed by Davis. (The last album recorded in Hackensack was Benny Golson's Gone With Golson, for the New Jazz label.)
Rudy pulled out all the engineering stops. Davis's piano sounds up front in the sonic scheme, with the horns warmly presented a few steps back in the mental picture Taylor's drums are urgent with a voluminous snap created by the room's interior Cloister-like space, and you can hear every note of Jones's bass hang in the rafters before drifting down. [Photo above of Rudy Van Gelder]
As this album shows, Davis (above) was a gorgeous hard-bop composer and player. His pieces have lovely melodies rich with hooks, and the arrangements feature deft unison harmonies that weave in and out of the melodies. At the time, Davis was in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers and determined to make his mark. It was brilliant on his part to choose Byrd and McLean for his front line. Davis recorded frequently with Byrd in the late 1950s and had appeared behind both Byrd and McLean on McLean's New Soil months earlier in May 1959. Several tracks on that album also are by Davis. [Photo above of Walter Davis Jr.]
For me, perhaps the high point on Davis Cup is Davis's Sweetness, a haunting and mournful mid-tempo ballad. The beauty of Rudy's studio can be heard distinctly through Davis's keyboard. You can hear every element of the piano, from the black and white keys being depressed to the little felt-covered hammers striking the strings. Byrd takes a solo, and his horn is fleshy and warm, the notes seeming to hover above the grand piano. Not bad for Rudy's first Englewood recording. What's strange is that the liner-notes writer, Joe Goldberg, never mentioned the new space used for the album. Like all things Rudy, the magic of the recording and all of his technical innovations would remain a secret. [Photo above of Donald Byrd by Francis Wolff (c) Mosaic Images]
Walter Davis Jr. died in 1990.
JazzWax notes: To read my multipart JazzWax interview with Rudy Van Gelder, go here. To read my WSJ profile of Rudy for free, go here. And for a handy discographical list of Rudy's recorded albums, go here.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Walter Davis Jr.'s Davis Cup here.
The album also is available at Spotify.
JazzWax clips: Here's the entire album, starting with the first track, Smake It...