Legendary jazz recording engineer Rudy Van Gelder dies at 91

Originally published on FACT

The man behind many jazz greats has passed away.

Jazz engineer Rudy Van Gelder has died at age 91. He recorded with legendary artists like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and more and an impressive majority of the Blue Note Records catalog. He was viewed by some as the most important jazz engineer of all time. He also worked with Prestige Records and Savoy Records.

Rudy Van Gelder has died, at 91. Truly sad news for the world of recorded music, jazz first and foremost. #RIP #RVG pic.twitter.com/VfpdVEVgkR

— Nate Chinen (@natechinen) August 25, 2016

One of Van Gelder’s biggest contributions to the genre was recording Coltrane’s definitive A Love Supreme over 50 years ago in December of 1965. It was recorded in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, the state that Van Gelder called home and carved out a special place for jazz by working out of his own studios, his first being a special control room designed and built by his parents in their Hackensack, NJ home in 1946.

The studio was immortalized in the mid-1950s by Monk’s song ‘Hackensack’. Listen to the track below.