Rudy Van Gelder in Hackensack: Defining the Jazz Sound in the 1950s

Recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder has been active since the 1940s. Skea notes that that the quality of Van Gelder's output rests not necessarily on technical innovation but on determination to master successive waves of state-of-the-art technology available to him and a legendary degree of perfectionism. The author argues that Van Gelder, having applied this craft on a vast number of classic mainstream, hard bop, and avant-garde recordings (notably those on the Blue Note and Impulse labels), contributed not only to the dissemination of jazz, but its artistic legitimacy and commercial viability as well.