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On August 25th, in the heat that we I wanted to blame everything on, Van Gelder passed away at the age of 91. I bet there is nobody who hasn't heard of Rudy Van Gelder. (In Japan, he is also known as RVG.) In 2016, the world lost super stars like Prince and David Bowie. The death of Van Gelder must have been as sad and shocking as theirs to jazz fans.
Van Gelder left his name in the history of jazz as a recording engineer, not as a musician. I haven't heard of any other engineer who became more famous than musicians in any other genres of music. He took charged in many recordings under distinguished jazz labels like Blue Note and Prestige. The records he produced enclosed such vivid and raw, sometimes too intense sounds. The key to the sound lies in a process called cutting. Cutting in LP making is a process to curve recorded sound onto a lacquer disk from a master tape. Van Gelder lived in the era. Since the process is crucial for sound quality of LPs, many of sound engineers at that time took part in the entire process from recording to cutting, I assume. Van Gelder was one of such people and he was exceptionally able to do that. He had outstanding skills and sensibility in optimizing recording for cutting. Then the outcome is delivered to listeners and becomes the color of the label. Especially for jazz, which was a developing genre at that time, his talent to enclose even atmosphere to a record was highly sought after.
	He never missed curving his identifications in dead wax of his recordings or cuttings. As you can see in the image below, there were various patterns to them. The early ones are bold and tough and resembles nice & old America to me. I assume he scratched on the records with the sharp tool on the left. When I saw his handwritings for the first time, the craftsmanship rather than that of engineer and hand-made feeling of the LPs from 1950s and his tools somewhat made me relieved and it made sense to me that records more than half a century years old are still loved by people.
When I think of the greatness of Van Gelder, this album always comes to my mind. It is Introducing by Kenny Burrell released in the 1950s. The B-side of the album starts with sound of conga by a master Candido Camero. If played in a enough volume, the beats will never fail to take your breath away, if you have legit ears. After, Kenny Clarke joins the light swinging beats with drums. The two masters brings me to the simple joy & happiness only with the percussion instruments.
	Such a experience is exclusive to records with RVG carved seals. CD is all right but records without one have very shallow sound and sound image is nonexistent. After that surprising realization, needless to say, it became my habit to check around stickers seeking for the sealing. One of our staffs in Ohsu shop, Sasaki mentioned RVG sound in his newsletter on September 2nd (Sorry, only available in Japanese) by chance. It was an accident that we mentioned the same thing but actually it wasn't "accident accident" at all. We were both listening to the record at the store attentively. Needless to say, we were pose in our works then. It was almost 10 years ago and we recently had one RVG record in stock luckily. Of course, I changed the cartridge of one of players at the store to mono and listened to it. The sound was as moving as ten years ago or even stronger. As it was the second time for me, it didn't freeze me this time. However, it completely froze customers at Jazz section. I checked two new recruits at the counter but they were too busy finishing many web orders. It was such a busy day... I feel sorry for the leading player Kenny Burrell that I didn't talk about him at all but let's move on to other VGR records that are so impressive.
The next is Miles by The New Miles Davis Quintet. Everyone knows the emperor Miles. His RVG recordings lasted under Prestige until the end of the 50s when we signed to Columbia. The most impressive one of the Prestige era to me is this record. This as known as "ogawa-no Miles" meaning Miles of the brook in Japan. The recording was in 1955 and that is the beginning of the heyday of Blue Note also. The dynamic (maybe too dynamic) sound that was born by his trials and errors hit the bull's eye this time. The dynamism and Miles's trumpet makes the sound irresistible. It is the sound of jazz, not jazzy or whatsoever. The other day, I listened to Original Jazz Classics Reissue with think paper jacket. Since the original is amazing, the quality of this non-RVG record was more than good enough. I would like to clarify here that the difference between RVG and non-RVG has exceptions.
	Blue Train by John Coltrane John has more albums recorded by Van Gelder than Miles, which is almost all of his albums except few exceptions. Of those pieces, I would like to push Blue Train, which is the only Blue Note record lead by him. One of the great things about this album is its perfection and coherence. Every element, including title, sound atmosphere, color of the jacket, and even the label, is all blue. I think this record represents true blue. (I will ignore Blue Note has a record called True Blue this time.) Van Gelder, as expected, curved the every element of blueness into the record. Believe me. Non-RVG records of this album has less blueness. That is the evidence. Many years ago, there was a part time worker Mr. N who was also a professional recording engineer in our record shop. Luckily (unluckily?) he listened to the original issue of Blue Train and spend his hours of wages on it. Looking back his face turned kind of blue... (In Japan equivalence of "turn pale" is "turn blue", interestingly).
Out Of The Afternoon By Roy Haynes This is a stereo album and the sign curved seal also says "Stereo Vangelder". No matter whether stereo or mono, his greatness doesn't change a bit. The thick and concentrated sound is still there and now it spreads horizontally in addition! Roy Haynes's powerful and intense drums and Roland Kirk's sax that almost teas saran net actually fly towards me! The impact when I played this loud at the store was as strong as that of Kenny Burrell. The only regret is that Sasaki wasn't there with me. Allow me to repeat it. Stereo doesn't harm his greatness even a tiny bit.
These days I can tell Van Gelder's recordings only by listening. When I got it right, I realize his greatness again. When I got it wrong, I still get impressed discovering the great recordings accomplished by other engineers. I think this is one of the proofs of depth of analogue records. Apart from Van Gelder, there were also other engineers who achieved as quality recordings as he did including: Jack Higgins and Ray Fowler who captured honest & stretching sounds of artists such as Bill Evans & Cannonball Adderley and Roy DuNann from Contemporary who produced as good masterpieces as Van Gelder. The more I listen to jazz, the more I feel passion to capture the moment by the engineers behind the scenes. I believe one of the reasons that analogue records still attract people is their souls that are alive and shining for decades.
If there is another chance to write on this topic, I would like to focus on other engineers and other genres as well. The records below are both classical. The left is by Van Gelder and the right is by Roy DuNann. I wonder how they sound by the hands of the masters. Written by Kaneto Kataoka from Hi-Fi Do Record Shop

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