Background

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Rudolph Van Gelder was born on November 2, 1924 in Jersey City, New Jersey. He grew up in Hackensack, New Jersey, a 15-minute car ride from the George Washington Bridge (Skea, 2002). According to a 2012 interview with Marc Myers of JazzWax.com, his mother and father owned a successful women’s clothing store in nearby Passaic.

At the age of twelve, Rudy’s interest in all things audio began to bloom. He saw an ad for a primitive home recording device called a Home Recordo on the back of a comic book and had to have one (Skea, 2002). It worked essentially as a pantograph controlled by the user’s home turntable. Sound was captured by the device’s horn and instantly transferred onto a blank cardboard disc with a lacquer coating (Sickler, Sicker & Kimery, 2011).

Rudy was also getting interested in amateur or ham radio around this time as well, sending and receiving transmissions with other hobbyists (Skea, 2002). In high school, he started building mixers and amplifiers in his spare time, and he would go to “Radio Row” on Cortlandt Street in downtown Manhattan on Saturdays to buy parts (Zand, 2004). He played trumpet in the high school marching band, though he has described his playing as “terrible” and ended up taking tickets at the high school football games instead (Skea, 2002; Zand, 2004).

Also while in high school, Van Gelder would find a way into the jazz clubs on East 52nd Street in Manhattan to get a glimpse of jazz legends like Roy Eldridge, Billie Holiday, Art Tatum, and his personal favorite, Coleman Hawkins. As for his future avocation, one of his earliest experiences recording other musicians took place at a furniture store owned by the parents of a high school friend. In front of the microphone was a twelve-piece band which included many of his classmates (Skea, 2002).

After graduating high school in 1942, an interest in photography led him to study optometry at the Pennsylvania College of Optometry in Philadelphia, now Salus University (Skea, 2002). But his interest in recording continued. He brought a portable 78-R.P.M. disc recorder with him to college, and throughout college he would record live performances at jazz clubs in Philadelphia (Robertson, 1957).

Also while studying in Philadelphia, Van Gelder visited the radio station WCAU (now WPHT). In interviews he has regularly described this experience as a defining moment. Seeing the engineers working the futuristic-looking equipment gave him a strong feeling that it was the kind of place he wanted to be (Cuscuna, 2004).

Still in college, Van Gelder would come home during the summer months and continue to record. One summer he commuted into Manhattan to work at Nola Studio in the Steinway Building on West 57th Street (Skea, 2002). After graduating from college, Rudy migrated back to Hackensack and established his own optometry practice. But his passion for recording would persist and eventually develop into a legendary career.

Main photo: Rudy Van Gelder’s ham radio setup, 1940s (Source: The Van Gelder Estate)

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Introduction
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