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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
khaki8
206 posts
 
I listen to a lot of RVG on vinyl...originals...not reissues. They sound great...really great. He did a lot of stuff that is not that expensive to buy still.
Everybody has their opinion but this one reminds of the thread where someone said that Miles wasn't really that great!!!
dopogue
1,773 posts
 
If you Google "Rudy Van Gelder" you'll find a lot of interesting stuff. As far as I know, he's still with us (born 1924). Trivia note: When he recorded classical stuff for Vox he was sometimes billed as Dr. Rudolf Van Gelder -- the "Dr." came from his status as an optometrist! Dave
foster_9
1,638 posts
 
Hedgehog: Yeah I've been to the XRCD website. I use it to as a guide to try to find the discs elsewhere. The XRCD website has higher prices then you can find elsewhere but I always look for XRCD or the 20bit logo when I shop online.
arahl
73 posts
 
Great thread. I too wondered about all the praise for Van Gelder, until I recently heard an original Blue Note mono pressing of Horace Silver's Blowin' the Blues Away. I went out and bought a few, and IMHO I now can say that original vinyl pressings of RVG recordings on Blue Note in mono up to the mid-60's, and on Impulse (either stereo or mono - both great, but different) are right up there with the best recordings I have ever heard. RVG is also pretty good on Prestige but less good on Riverside (i.e., Monk) and other labels. By comparison, all RVG digital reissues are inferior and even the vinyl reissues are marginal at best. Why the difference by label? I suspect it was because RVG gave his producers what they wanted - and Alfred Lion of Blue Note and Bob Thiele at Impulse were the best of the best.
r_f_sayles's avatar
r_f_sayles
872 posts
 
I'm with Khaki8 on the point that the original vinyl is representative of fine musical reproduction and engineering.

It's shoddy repressing or digitization that has degraded the sound quality IMHO. Go back to the original mono vinyl and give credit were it is do, I think you’ll see what I mean.

I'll keep mine and please contact me on anyone looking to rid themselves of those old, dusty, nasty, (low)-Fi Rudy Van Gelder Blue Note Jazz Mono vinyls from 1953 to 1967 in EX+ shape. I will pay you fairly for them so you can go on your way and buy more CD's and wildly priced cables and equipment to try and make music sound better than this. Ha, ha, ha. Especially, anyone with a copy Of “See you at the Fair” by Ben Webster on Mono Impulse… in fact, write me about the Impulse pressings too!

Happy Listening!
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