Van Gelder Studio

From around 1952, beginning with a session led by Gil Melle that was sold to Blue Note, recordings were made by Van Gelder for commercial release in the living room of his parents' house at 25 Prospect Avenue in Hackensack, a house that had been built with the intention of doubling as a recording studio. The area was later subsumed by the Hackensack University Medical Center.

In a 2012 interview, Van Gelder explained to Marc Myers,

"My father decided to build a home on a lot there in 1946. By then I was completely involved with recording local musicians who wanted to hear themselves on a 78 rpm. When my father was having the blueprints done, I asked him if I could have a control room with a double glass window next to the living room. I wanted to perfect the techniques of contemporary music recording... ...My father agreed immediately. He knew how passionate I was about the music and the process of recording. I asked that the living room be as large a space as possible, within the footprint of the house. My father’s architect decided to accomplish this by making the living room ceiling higher than the rest of the house, which made for great acoustics."

"The house was U-shaped, with the bottom of the U facing the street. It was a modern, California-style house. If you viewed the house from the street, the bedrooms and control-room were in the wing on the right side. The living room/studio was in the center, and the left wing housed the kitchen and dining room. Outside the dining room was an open patio... ...They [Van Gelder's parents] soon added a separate entrance to the bedroom wing. They were always very supportive and encouraging of my recording activities. All of the musicians smoked at the time but my parents rarely complained. Just once I remember my mother leaving me a note asking me to tidy up better."[7]

In July 1959, Van Gelder moved to a new facility in Englewood Cliffs.[8] The last recording session at Hackensack and the first at Englewood Cliffs were both led by Ike Quebec and are contained in From Hackensack to Englewood Cliffs, a collection of singles recorded by the saxophonist in July 1959.

Important recordings made at Hackensack include Booker Ervin' "The Space Book" "The Freedom Book "The In Between" "Groovin' High" "Exultation!" Miles Davis' Workin' and Steamin' (1956); solo debuts by Hank Mobley (Hank Mobley Quartet, 1955) and Johnny Griffin (Introducing Johnny Griffin, 1956).[9]

Van Gelder's recording techniques were closely guarded, to the extent that microphones were moved when photography of bands was taking place in order to disguise his means of recording.[10]

The new structure with a 39-foot ceiling[8] and fine acoustics, designed by the architect David Henken and inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright,[11] resembles a chapel. The critic Ira Gitler describes the studio in liner notes for the saxophonist Booker Ervin's The Space Book (1964): "In the high-domed, wooden-beamed, brick-tiled, spare modernity of Rudy Van Gelder's studio, one can get a feeling akin to religion."[12] "When I started making records, there was no quality recording equipment available to me," Van Gelder recalled in 2005. "I had to build my own mixer. The only people who had quality equipment were the big companies. They were building their own electronics."[13]

Among many significant recordings made at Englewood Cliffs are John Coltrane's A Love Supreme (1964), Booker Ervin's "The Space Book", 1964 Sonny Rollins' Sonny Rollins on Impulse! (1965), Stanley Turrentine's Cherry (1972) and Don't Mess with Mister T (1973), Andrew Hill's Point of Departure (1964), Freddie Hubbard's Red Clay (1970) and Hank Mobley's Soul Station (1960).[14]

The following table lists recording sessions for albums held at the studio.[15]