Rudy Van Gelder recording / Hackensack

All of the following compositions were recorded by Rudy Van Gelder in Van Gelder's family home in Hackensack, NJ, from the early 1950s to July 1959.


Working out of a specially designed room in his parents’ home in Hackensack, NJ, Rudy Van Gelder honed his skills on the rapidly developing recording technology of the day and began to perfect his approach to recording small group jazz. By the mid-1950s, Van Gelder’s sound in Hackensack was the go-to for labels such as Blue Note, Prestige, and Savoy, between whom he engineered hundreds of sessions. Until transferring his operations to the famous Englewood Cliffs Studio in July of 1959, the sound of a Van Gelder recorded session in Hackensack was the pinnacle of the medium.