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Rudy Van Gelder: Genius or just lucky?

Like any serious jazz fan, I have a lot of music produced by the "legendary" Rudy Van Gelder in that studio in Hackensack NJ during the fifties and sixties. I've always thought they were kind of thin sounding and sometimes even tinny, with poor bass and flat dynamics. As I go deeper into the era I keep finding recordings – both live and from other studios - that really blow away a lot of the RVG studio stuff. For example, yesterday I was listening to Monk's 'Live at the Blackhawk' , which is a great natural recording with the instruments sounding both lifelike and life-size, with good bass. It was recorded in 1960 live in a club, and sounds - to my ears - 100% better than the contemporary studio recordings (Monk's Music, Brilliant Corners, etc). The live recording also doesn't have any of the studio baffling that was so fashionable on early stereo recordings, that makes instruments sound isolated from each other rather than part of a unified soundstage (And RVG is certainly not the only engineer guilty of this. Has anyone really ever heard a drum kit where every piece was stacked vertically?). Although this is a Riverside release it was not engineered by RVG. It seems that there was some very good recording technology at the time that was not being utilized in RVG's studio, or the acoustics were funny - I don't know.

This isn't, of course, limited to Monk recordings. That just happens to be the example I was listening to yesterday. I find this to be the case with most RVG dates.

You can't ignore the importance of the RVG records simply because of who and what he recorded, and he recorded the best, but I've seen a lot of articles offering accolades for his productions that just seem overblown. I think a lot of those records- great music or not - sound really mediocre.

Any other opinions out there?
grimace
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hedgehog
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I read somewhere that some of the early recordings were made in his NY apartment...shared it with his mother and/or grandmother, if I recall correctly. I very much prefer the LP version of the RVG recordings. What a stable of artists he was fortunate enough to witness/record. The overall quality is inconsistent, but it may have been due to circumstances beyond his direct control.

There was a great article on a recording engineer by the name of Roy DuNann in Stereophool a few years back. Check out a the quality of a few of his recordings...Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section, Sonny Rollins-Way Out West, Sonny Rollins and The Contemporary Leaders. The article/interview is an interesting read. I would like to hear a "DuNann" version of many of my favorite Blue Note recordings...
foster_9
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Grimace: Simply an outstanding thread! The RVG remasters bug me no end for their lean sometimes tinny quality. But, if your're not a vinyl person and seriously into jazz, your're stuck with buying many of the classic performances only available on Blue Note via Van Gelder. I resist doing this sometimes because I dislike the recordings so much. There is no escaping though if you want to have many of these classics on disc. I recently recieved "Ready for Freddie" by Freddie Hubbard as a gift. It's a Blue Note RVG and not too bad of a recording, actually better than some of the RVG's I have. Example, the excellent "Go" by Dexter Gordon on RVG is another lean recording that was disappointing. I'm still trying to find classic well done jazz remasters. Columbia/Sony is doing an excellent job with Miles.
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hedgehog
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Foster 9, you may want to take a look at some of the XRCD discs...if you haven't already. The selection is somewhat limited, but the sound quality is much better than the OEM disc. The remasters utilizing the K2 process, which is a lower grade version of the XRCD process I believe, is a cut above also.

Of course, in most cases, even the $10 OJC vinyl equals/betters a CD. ;)
slipknot1
1,423 posts
 
A lot of Rudy Van Gelder's work was not recorded in a NY apartment, but in the living room of his parent's suburban home in Hackensack, NJ. RVG's actual studio facility, where later things were recorded is/was located in Englewood, NJ

Given the fact that you had the likes of Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Philly Joe Jones, Thelonius Monk, etc. camped out in your parent's living room, playing their instruments while you drag your mics, recorder, cables in there explains a lot of what people are hearing. While they may not be tapes that demonstrate what the audiophile community likes in a "reference recording", I like to think that they are more of a snapshot of some of the greatest musical minds of jazz, that happened to be captured for later listening.
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hedgehog
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Slipknot,

His parents' NJ home, even more interesting!

You are correct, the work he performed is what has turned out to be important stuff. Unfortunately, lovers of the Blue Note artists can't always have it all...good music AND primo sound quality.
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