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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

Showing 1 response by davemitchell

davemitchell
253 posts
 
The early (1956-1959) RGV recordings sound the best. They are far from perfect or spatially natural, but really charming for fans of the music. The tonality of the instruments was better then, and the sound was full and lively. The piano always sounds like a small upright that is just barely in tune and burried in the corner, but I've grown to like its spooky sound. The cymbals, especially on some of the earlier Blue Notes, sound too "white" and splashy (e.g. Blue Train), but still exciting and engaging. The Prestige recordings usually sounded the best with less of the "white" cymbal sound.

As you get into the 1960s and RGV moved out of his parents house and into a studio, the recordings get thinner, brighter and generally worse sounding. This is not just true of RGV's recordings, but the jazz industry as a whole. Early transistors and changing recording techniques played a part in this.
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