The Disk Recording Era

As Rudy began his optometry practice at a new office on Cedar Lane in nearby Teaneck (Skea, 2002), he and his parents moved into their new home. Though Rudy was now making some money recording, it was still primarily a hobby, and optometry still served as his main source of income (Myers, 2012). In the early days of recording at Prospect Ave., Rudy’s clients were independent musicians. Some were neighborhood acquaintances, others were professionals that included Sonny Igoe, Red Mitchell, Tony Fruscella, Gerry Mulligan, Lee Konitz, Warne Marsh, Zoot Sims, and Phil Urso (Skea, 2002).

Rudy had been recording to 78-R.P.M. lacquer disks since the 1930s and continued to do so. He was using what he has referred to as P.A. or public announcement microphones at the time (Hovan, 1999). For mixing the signals from multiple mics, Rudy used a simple custom-built mixer.

Main photo: The Hackensack control room, late 1940s (Source: The Van Gelder Estate)