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september/october 2005 issue 276 free now in our 31st year www.jazz-blues.com RUDY VAN GELDER Chris Hovan’s Interview with the Legendary Jazz Recording Engineer is Revisited as Blue Note’s RVG Reissue Series Reaches 150 Titles ALSO: SHEMEKIA COPELAND A New CD and On Stage at Fat Fish Blue THELONIOUS MONK & JOHN COLTRANE Newly Discovered Historic Live Tapes Now On Disc ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME AND MUSEUM TURNS 10 Dave Koz September/October 2005 • Issue 276 RUDY VAN GELDER INTERVIEW REVISITED Published by Martin Wahl Communications By Chris Hovan Editor & Founder Bill Wahl From the Editor...This interview by Chris Hovan with the Legendary recording master Rudy Van Gelder first ran in our July-August 1999 issue. At that time the Layout & Design Bill Wahl Blue Note reissue series, Rudy Van Gelder Editions, was in its initial stage in the Operations Jim Martin U.S. Now, six years later, the total number of RVG Editions released by the label will Pilar Martin reach 150 titles with its September release of six more CDs. In recognition of that mark, we have decided to rerun this marvelous interview for those who have not Contributors seen it, and to refresh those who did on the art of Rudy Van Gelder. In addition, our Michael Braxton, Mark Cole, many thousands of web readers who download our issues around the globe will get Chris Hovan, Nancy Ann Lee, a chance to read it as we have only been posting issues for download for two years. Peanuts, Mark Smith, Duane Verh and Ron Weinstock. For many decades now, the name from people in the record business, pri- Distribution Jason Devine Rudy Van Gelder has been synonymous vate record labels at the time, and I started ICON Distribution with recorded jazz music. The number recording for them. That’s how I got into of sessions he’s done over the years it. Check out our new, updated web easily numbers in the tens of thousands. The first record I ever made that was page. Now you can search for CD He’s been actively involved in sold as a commercial record Reviews by artists, Titles, Record the recording work of such was one of Joe Mooney, who Labels or JBR Writers. Twelve years quintessential jazz labels as was an organ player working of reviews are up and we’ll be going Prestige, Impulse, Verve, CTI, around here at the time with all the way back to 1974! and of course, Blue Note. In Bucky Pizzarelli and a bass more recent times, Van Gelder player by the name of Bob Address all Correspondence to.... has cut sessions for Highnote, Carter. It was a working trio and Jazz & Blues Report Milestone, Reservoir, Venus, I recorded them for this com- 19885 Detroit Road # 320 and N2K, to name just a few. In pany called Carousel Records Rocky River, Ohio 44116 fact, drummer T.S. Monk’s N2K and it was actually available for Main Office ...... 216.651.0626 album, Monk on Monk, was purchase. It was played on the Editor's Desk ... 440.331.1930 done at Van Gelder’s and has radio and everybody liked it. [email protected] received many critical plaudits, There was this station in New Web .................. www.jazz-blues.com most recently being named Jazz Album York, WNEW. The disc jockey was Al of the Year in Down Beat Magazine’s Collins and he used to play that every af- Copyright © 2005 Martin-Wahl Communications Inc. Annual Readers Poll. From the first time ternoon and so it got to be quite popular. I interviewed Van Gelder in 1989 for a No portion of this publication may be CH: When you started out, how much reproduced without written permission radio program I was producing I could sense his genuine love for the music and of the recording equipment was available from the publisher. All rights Reserved. his great interest in the legacy he has for purchase and how much did you end Jazz Report was founded in Buffalo New had a hand in preserving. I found him to up designing and constructing yourself? York in March of 1974 and began in Cleve- be no less engaging and immersed in RVG: When I first started making land in April of 1978. We are subsidized his work, his new remastering of Blue records, which was non-commercially, solely through advertisement and ask that Note classics in particular, when we had there was nothing available. That was how you support our advertisers. occasion to again speak one evening in I got into it, radio and HAM radio, and I May of this year (1999). used to construct my own equipment. a W division of Chris Hovan: For those readers There were no commercial companies artin-Wahl c o m m u n i c a t i o n s who may not be as familiar with your making recording consoles as they are career, tell me briefly about how you got today. The major record companies all involved in the recording business. built their own and if you wanted to do anything you had to do it yourself. Which Rudy Van Gelder: Well, I was al- I did. That’s how I started. How much did "Buffalonious" ways involved in recording when I was I end up designing? Of course, it was ev- a kid. It got to be a business shortly erything. The only commercial designs Original mascot from thereafter. I used to record my friends, were available through radio equipment the many of whom were amateur musicians. manufacturers. They had consoles for Buffalo Jazz Report I used to do it at my parents’ house and radio purposes and that was my first con- days – mid '70s then people heard about that and then I sole, which was actually a modified radio would get calls from musicians and sing- console. A neat little thing too. It had one Created by ers in the neighborhood and they would meter, but it made some very nice records, Christine Engla Eber want me to record them, which I did, some of which I’m remastering right now. Watch for new t-shirts bearing his image–coming soon! making demos and that sort of grew for quite awhile. Then I started getting calls CH: Tell us about how you met Alfred PAGE TWO September/October 2005 • Issue 276 sound that way. There was a certain when the stereo LP came in there was consistency and the people who bought this question of compatibility. Who wants those records would look forward to what to buy two albums of the same music? was coming next because they knew the You had to make both available and that record would have a good sound. The became very difficult so what happened musicians were all of a certain caliber was everything that was made in and he would get a good performance Hackensack was mono. Even towards out of them. So that’s all what blended the very end when we were recording together to launch my adventure in this two-track we weren’t listening in stereo. thing. We were recording in two-track and we were listening in mono because there CH: In a previous interview with me, was only one speaker in Hackensack in you discussed how you tried to give each the control room and only one speaker label its own identity soundwise. With- in the studio. So how could you listen in out getting too specific or technical, ex- stereo when you only have one speaker? plain how you approached that and how And all the judgments, Alfred’s judg- you approached the development of Blue ments, as to mix and balance, and mine Note’s sound. too and the musicians too and how they RVG: I would like to modify some- sounded in relationship to each other, RudyVan Gelder (left) at work, pictured thing of what you said, you say it’s “my and all that during the creative part of with Blue Note’s Alfred Lion at a record- sound”, really what it is is my feeling and those recordings was done in mono. It ing session at New York’s Half Note in couldn’t be any other way. Towards the 1960. Photo ©Mosaic Images my approach to the musicians I’m record- ing at a particular session. I really don’t end we were running two-track sessions Lion and subsequently began to record but no one had ever listened to them. for Blue Note. like to think of it as being “my sound.” What I’m doing really is trying to let the So there was no particular attention or RVG: I had been recording for vari- musicians be heard the way they want attempt at creating a stereo field at that ous independent jazz labels at the time to be heard. What it really is is the musi- time. and had never met Alfred and I recorded cians’ sound CH: Please discuss your approach a band for the musician called Gil Melle. Alfred [Lion] would be very meticu- to the new Rudy Van Gelder Edition Blue He had a nice little band and came to lous, well-rehearsed, and he would come Notes in terms of working with the ste- me through this other label, I think it was in and see that everything was going well reo and mono tapes and deciding which Progressive Records. Alfred acquired and he knew what he was going to get format to use for the new master.