Jazz?

SixesAlltheway said:
I see that people are discussing jazz rock here now. A genre of its own really. I'd like to throw the album Third by Soft Machine into the mix. Check it out!
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Thanks for the suggestion Sixes. Will still try that out.

Does anyone out here know Gong?

(and Speaking of Soft Machine)

http://www.udiscovermusic.com/daevid-allen-rip
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Those of us lucky enough to have seen Daevid Allen with Gong in their hey day will never forget the experience. Theirs was prog rock with jazz overtones, humour, madness and all round freakiness, at a time when to be a Freak was the way it is.

Sadly Daevid Allen has passed away as confirmed by his son, Orlando Monday Allen; the innovator, and all round musical eccentric was 77 years old

“And so dada Ali, bert camembert, the dingo Virgin, divided alien and his other 12 selves prepare to pass up the oily way and back to the planet of love. And I rejoice and give thanks,” he wrote. “Thanks to you dear dear daevid for introducing me to my family of magick brothers and mystic sisters, for revealing the mysteries, you were the master builder but now have made us all the master builders. As the eternal wheel turns we will continue your message of love and pass it around. We are all one, we are all gong. Rest well my friend, float off on our ocean of love. The gong vibration will forever sound and its vibration will always lift and enhance. You have left such a beautiful legacy and we will make sure it forever shines in our children and their children. Now is the happiest time of yr life. Blessed be.”
Just a few weeks ago Allen had announced he had been given six months to live, after cancer had spread to his lung. “I am not interested in endless surgical operations and in fact it has come as a relief to know that the end is in sight. I am a great believer in ‘The Will of the Way Things Are’ and I also believe that the time has come to stop resisting and denying and to surrender to the way it is.”

Allen, an Australian national, born in 1938 was refused entry back into the UK from France in 1967, and this ended his brief tenure in Soft Machine. Undaunted he formed a new group, Gong, and the first album under that name was Magick Brother, released in 1970. Allen and his partner, the poet Gilli Smyth, intoned their pithy observations and countercultural calls-to-action like ‘Change The World’, over an organic stew of largely acoustic instruments and percussion.

A year later along came the brilliant, Camembert Electrique, more psychedelic and progressive vein than its predecessor, it included the first mention of Radio Gnome Invisible and its broadcasts from the Planet Gong. The album was originally released on the French label BYG Actuel in 1971, but the newly formed Virgin Records acquired the rights in 1973. And in a move that gained the group considerable exposure, Virgin sold it for £0.49, then the price of a single. Gong came to the notice of John Peel and recorded sessions for his influential radio show.

Allen let his imagination run riot on Radio Gnome Invisible Part 1 – The Flying Teapot, also released on BYG and later leased to Virgin. Guitarist Steve Hillage, who had played in Egg and Khan, was drafted into the band along with synthesiser player Tim Blake (aka Hi T Moonweed), adding a more ‘cosmic’ feel to the music.

Angel’s Egg, recorded later in 1973, was more eclectic than its predecessor. It included elements of be-bop and gallic soundingchanson. This dazzling sound world was explored more fully on You, the final instalment of the trilogy, released in 1974. While Allen offered fewer, but still telling, vocal and lyrical contributions, the band’s collective playing had reached new heights. Hillage, particularly, was on stunning form, adding searing solos to the full throttle space-rock of ‘Master Builder’, and the majestic, synth-led instrumental ‘A Sprinkling Of Clouds’.

Daevid Allen left Gong after You in 1974, but the group carried on, playing old favourites and selections from Steve Hillage’s recent solo album Fish Rising in concert. Allen himself recorded under a number of aliases, including Planet Gong, New York Gong and Gongmaison.

In 1992 Allen reunited with saxophonist and flautist Malherbe for the album Shapeshifter, recorded simply as Gong. Over most the next two decades Gong with Daevid Allen at the controls along with a largely revolving cast of musicians continued to record and release the occasional album.

It was while on tour in 2014 that Allen became ill and sadly could not continue to challenge our perceptions of what music and entertainment are all about.

Planet Earth is the poorer, Planet Gong the richer.


Daevid-allen.jpg
 
Soft Machine were on the same scene as Floyd in the late 60's but then went in a more jazz/jazz fusion direction with their music.

Yes, I love the music I've heard from Gong, space rock!

 
I'm quite fond of Camembert Electrique - it's one of those records that are incomprehensible on first listen but eventually reveal a strange logic of their own. Very fun, very imaginative.

As for Soft Machine, the first album is my favourite, 'cause I'm a softie who likes my avant-garde with occasional pop hooks.
 
McCoy Tyner, last living member of the Coltrane Quartet (1962-1965), and probably still my favourite pianist (I have around 40 albums of the man, on which he is the leader; also others where he is sideman), gets honoured in Philidelphia.

http://hipstersanctuary.com/2015/04/09/philly-prodigal-son-mccoy-tyner-honored-by-mayor-nutter-city/
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“McCoy has changed the way everyone after him has played the piano,”

“His percussive approach and sense of harmony signaled a new frontier for the instrument. And his embrace of African, Asian and Afro-Cuban ideas puts him in the league of Duke Ellington.”
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Another related article
 
I just found out my old college jazz teacher died last fall. Here's something from his 70s band - my teacher wrote this piece and plays trombone on it.

 
Although I haven't heard some of these records, I probably would make quite a different list. Still interesting to see though:


The 50 Greates Jazz albums ever:

http://www.udiscovermusic.com/50-greatest-jazz-albums-ever

At the end of any year it’s a great time to look back and so we’ve decided to attempt to come up with a definitive list of the 50 Greatest Jazz Albums of all time. Impossible, you are probably thinking, and it probably is, but rather than just thinking of our favourites we decided to take a good look through the web to see what other lists there are and combine our findings.

As usual we expect many of you to disagree, sometimes strongly, but as usual we will love hearing from you.

It took us several days of searching but here it is, the 50 greatest…

50. Thelonious Monk – Genius of Modern Music vol.1 & 2.
49. Count Basie – the Original American Decca Recordings
48. Bud Powell – The Amazing Bud Powell Vo.1
47. Weather Report – Heavy Weather
46. John Coltrane & Thelonious Monk – At Carnegie Hall
45. Horace Silver – Song For My Father
44. Grant Green – Idle Moments
43. Count Basie – The Complete Atomic Basie
42. Hank Mobley – Soul Station
41. Charlie Christian – The Genius of the Electric Guitar
40. Art Pepper meets the Rhythm Section
39. John Coltrane – My Favourite Things
38. Benny Goodman – At Carnegie Hall 1938
37. Wes Montgomery – The incredible Jazz Guitar of Wes Montgomery
36. The Mahavishnu Orchestra With John McLaughlin – Inner Mounting Flame
35. Clifford Brown and Max Roach – Clifford Brown & Max Roach
34. Andrew Hill – Point of Departure
33. Herbie Hancock – Head Hunters
32. Dexter Gordon – Go
31. Sarah Vaughan – With Clifford Brown
30. The Quintet – Jazz at Massey Hall
29. Bill Evans Trio – Waltz For Debby
28. Lee Morgan – The Sidewinder
27. Bill Evans – Sunday at the village Vanguard
26. Thelonious Monk – Brilliant Corners
25. Keith Jarrett – the Koln Concert
24. John Coltrane – Giant Steps
23. Herbie Hancock – Maiden Voyage
22. Duke Ellington – Ellington at Newport
21. Cecil Taylor – Unit Structures
20. Charlie Parker – Complete Savoy and Dial Studio recordings
19. Miles Davis – Birth of the Cool
18. Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers – Moanin’
17. Albert Ayler – Spiritual Unity
16. Eric Dolphy – Out To Lunch
15. Oliver Nelson – The Blues and the Abstract Truth
14. Erroll Garner – Concert By the Sea
13. Wayne Shorter – Speak No Evil
12. Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto – Getz/Gilberto
11. Louis Armstrong – Best of the Hot 5s and 7s
10. John Coltrane – Blue Train
9. Miles Davis – Bitches Brew
8. Sonny Rollins – Saxophone Colossus
7. Cannonball Adderley – Somethin’ Else
6. Charles Mingus – The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
5. Ornette Coleman – The Shape of Jazz to Come
4. Charles Mingus – Mingus Ah Um
3. Dave Brubeck Quartet – Time Out
2. John Coltrane – A Love Supreme
1. Miles Davis – Kind of Blue
 
Interesting super group. Not sure what to expect from these guys but the names are big. I hope it won't "just" sound like Santana style music. Rather more avant garde please.

http://www.notreble.com/buzz/2016/0...jazz-rock-supergroup-featuring-marcus-miller/
Carlos Santana has formed a new jazz-rock supergroup called Mega Nova, and it promises to be incredible. The legendary guitarist has recruited an equally legendary band including keyboardist Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, drummer Cindy Blackman Santana, and bassist Marcus Miller....
Mega-Nova.jpg

... Santana also stated he wants the band to representative of how they want the world to change. “I want to be able to travel with this band eventually, and be the peace ambassadors, which is what Louis Armstrong used to be, and what I would say Bob Marley or John Lennon represented,” he said. “Let me say really clearly: Wayne and Herbie and I and Cindy and Marcus, we are the frequency to do the opposite of Donald Trump. We don’t see walls – we saw the Berlin Wall come down. We’ve been to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and we saw what that stuff is. We play music to bring, once and for all, inclusiveness and family. This is the band.”
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I've always wanted to hear Carlos Santana play Jazz. I know he's a big fan of the music but I've never really heard him play anything remotely similar. Granted I'm not much of a Santana listener. His soloing style is more on the blues/rock side, but maybe there's some jazz vocabulary in there he doesn't use. One thing that will really provoke that is a solid band that can harmonically challenge him, Marcus Miller and Herbie Hancock can certainly do that. Really excited for this lineup. I am not familiar with Cindy Blackman, quick google search shows that she's Carlos' wife. A pretty interesting range of people she's worked with:

Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Simmons, Ron Carter, Buckethead,

Although "supergroup" is a rock music term which makes me think this will be more on the latin rock side of things (i.e. Santana style music), I'd really like to see them doing something a bit more exciting.
 
Mosh said:
A pretty interesting range of people she's worked with:

Pharoah Sanders, Sonny Simmons, Ron Carter, Buckethead...
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That whole Wiki bit lacks citation it should be noted. Would be interested in when she performed with Buckethead though; never seen it mentioned before. Buckethead did an album with Michael Shrieve (Santana's drummer), so there may be a connection there. And if she's in any way connected to Bill Laswell, then that might also be the link...

EDIT: Actually I see her cited as having contributed to "various Praxis experiments"; so that's the connection. She's not credited on any of their albums though; the link is probably pretty tenuous...

EDIT: Okay, Buckethead, Blackman, & Bill Laswell have played together! ::)
Do you have any plans to take Praxis on a full tour? I saw you guys live in New York once, but that was years ago.
It was always different. I did Praxis once in Japan with just me, Brain, a DJ and a trumpet player. We played at Fuji Rock Festival. It was really interesting, but it had nothing to do with what the records were. And then we did one with Tatsuya Yoshida, myself and Buckethead, a trio, which was really interesting. We had another trio with me, Buckethead and Cindy Blackman. So it’s always been these really different lineups which have nothing to do with—people get confused, I think. They think if you put a name on something then you have to do it again just like that, and you’re in a band, you know. I never thought like that, so I just put any name on anything, as long as we play and people like it, and you get something out of it. So every time we play it’s always been different. We did do a tour of the West Coast probably seven years ago, something like that, which was fairly consistent. It was the trio with DJ, four of us, that’s the closest thing to a tour we’ve ever done. When we started we were doing a lot of turntables, it was the trio with four, sometimes even more turntablists. The Invisibl Scratch Piklz or D.ST, or X-ecutioners, just tons of turntable stuff. And also a lot of breakbeat stuff, just dubbed-out breakbeats with Buckethead going crazy on top. But it’s always been really different. It’s always been interesting ’cause we keep changing it. Now there’s really no core band. I’m in touch with Brain, but Buckethead’s kind of invisible at the moment—he comes in and out of focus, so at the moment there’s no plans, but that could change tomorrow.

Sorry for off-topic posting, but you got me looking Mosh! :ok:
 
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Damn, Bobby Hutcherson died last week. There's a couple of jazz musicians I fancied seeing one day before they died and this vibraphonist was one of them. I learned about him via an album by McCoy Tyner, one of my favourite pianists (known from the John Coltrane Quartet). Bobby and McCoy worked on various records together. Bobby worked with several other interesting artists, e.g. Jackie McLean and Herbie Hancock resulting in some cool avant garde music. He played on many Blue Note albums, recorded between 1963 and 1977.

Please do read on...

source:
When news breaks that an influential jazz artist has died, the expectation is that they probably played a saxophone or a trumpet or a piano, maybe a guitar – but rarely the vibraphone, that pearly toned instrument more familiarly associated with the chiming loops of Steve Reichian minimalism, or with sultry dinner-jazz canoodling.

Bobby Hutcherson, the Californian jazz original who died aged 75 on 15 August, was a vibraphonist who transformed the sound of his instrument. As a sideman he brilliantly complemented other leaders, and as a leader he reinvented the jazz thinking behind improvising on this often-overlooked instrument. His predecessors were mostly swing players and beboppers – enthralling ones too, such as Benny Goodman sideman Lionel Hampton and the Modern Jazz Quartet’s blues-steeped bopper Milt Jackson. Hutcherson, though, fearlessly dived into the unpredictable crosscurrents released in the 1960s by the loose, mode-based music that followed Miles Davis’s Kind of Blue and early John Coltrane. He was so articulate in challenging musical settings that some of the best young players of his generation – including the saxophonists Joe Henderson and Sam Rivers, pianist/composer Andrew Hill and trumpeter Freddie Hubbard – were ready recruits to a string of terrific recordings led by Hutcherson for the Blue Note label in the 1960s.
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Bobby Hutcherson, Vibraphonist With Coloristic Range of Sound, Dies at 75

Bobby Hutcherson, one of the most admired and accomplished vibraphonists in jazz, died on Monday at his home in Montara, Calif. He was 75.

Marshall Lamm, a spokesman for Mr. Hutcherson’s family, confirmed the death, saying Mr. Hutcherson had long been treated for emphysema.

Mr. Hutcherson’s career took flight in the early 1960s, as jazz was slipping free of the complex harmonic and rhythmic designs of bebop. He was fluent in that language, but he was also one of the first to adapt his instrument to a freer postbop language, often playing chords with a pair of mallets in each hand.

He released more than 40 albums and appeared on many more, including some regarded as classics, like “Out to Lunch,” by the alto saxophonist, flutist and bass clarinetist Eric Dolphy, and “Mode for Joe,” by the tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson.

Both of those albums were a byproduct of Mr. Hutcherson’s close affiliation with Blue Note Records, from 1963 to 1977. He was part of a wave of young artists who defined the label’s forays into experimentalism, including the pianist Andrew Hill and the alto saxophonist Jackie McLean. But he also worked with hard-bop stalwarts like the tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon, and he later delved into jazz-funk and Afro-Latin grooves.

Mr. Hutcherson had a clear, ringing sound, but his style was luminescent and coolly fluid. More than Milt Jackson or Lionel Hampton, his major predecessors on the vibraphone, he made an art out of resonating overtones and chiming decay.

This coloristic range of sound, which he often used in the service of emotional expression, was one reason for the deep influence he left on stylistic inheritors like Joe Locke, Warren Wolf, Chris Dingman and Stefon Harris, who recently assessed him as “by far the most harmonically advanced person to ever play the vibraphone.”

Robert Hutcherson was born in Los Angeles on Jan. 17, 1941. His father, Eli, was a brick mason, and his mother, Esther, was a hairdresser.

Growing up in a black community in Pasadena, Calif., Mr. Hutcherson was drawn to jazz partly by way of his older siblings: His brother, Teddy, had gone to high school with Mr. Gordon, and his sister, Peggy, was a singer who worked with the Gerald Wilson Orchestra. (She later toured and recorded with Ray Charles as a Raelette.)

Mr. Hutcherson, who took piano lessons as a child, often described his transition to vibraphone as the result of an epiphany: Walking past a record store one day, he heard a recording of Milt Jackson and was hooked. A friend at school, the bassist Herbie Lewis, further encouraged his interest in the vibraphone, so Mr. Hutcherson saved up and bought one. He was promptly booked for a concert with Mr. Lewis’s band.

“Well, I hit the first note,” he recalled of that performance in a 2014 interview with JazzTimes. But, he added, “from the second note on it was complete chaos. You never heard people boo and laugh like that. I was completely humiliated. But my mom was just smiling, and my father was saying, ‘See, I told you he should have been a bricklayer.’”

Mr. Hutcherson persevered, eventually working with musicians like Mr. Dolphy, whom he had first met when Mr. Dolphy was his sister’s boyfriend, and the tenor saxophonist and flutist Charles Lloyd. In 1962, he joined a band led by a pair of Count Basie sidemen, the tenor saxophonist Billy Mitchell and the trombonist Al Grey, and it brought him to New York City for a debut engagement at Birdland.

The group broke up not long afterward, but Mr. Hutcherson stayed in New York, driving a taxicab for a living, his vibraphone stashed in the trunk. He was living in the Bronx and married to his high school sweetheart, the former Beth Buford, with whom he had a son, Barry — the inspiration for his best-known tune, the lilting modernist waltz “Little B’s Poem.”

Mr. Hutcherson caught a break when Mr. Lewis, his childhood friend, came to town and introduced him to the trombonist Grachan Moncur III, who in turn introduced him to Mr. McLean. “One Step Beyond,” an album by Mr. McLean released on Blue Note in 1963, featured Mr. Hutcherson’s vibraphone as the only chordal instrument. From that point on, he was busy.

The first album he released as a leader was “Dialogue” (1965), featuring Mr. Hill, the trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and the saxophonist and flutist Sam Rivers. Among his notable subsequent albums was “Stick-Up!” (1966), with Mr. Henderson and the pianist McCoy Tyner among his partners. He and Mr. Tyner would forge a close alliance.

After being arrested for marijuana possession in Central Park in 1967, Mr. Hutcherson lost his cabaret card, required of any musician working in New York clubs. He returned to California and struck a rapport with the tenor saxophonist Harold Land. Among the recordings they made together was “Ummh,” a funk shuffle that became a crossover hit in 1970. (It was later sampled by the rapper Ice Cube.)

In the early ’70s Mr. Hutcherson bought an acre of land along the coast in Montara, where he built a house. He lived there with his wife, the former Rosemary Zuniga, whom he married in 1972. She survives him, along with their son, Teddy, a marketing production manager for the organization SFJazz; his son Barry, a jazz drummer; and two grandchildren.

After his tenure on Blue Note, Mr. Hutcherson released albums on Columbia, Landmark and other labels, working with Mr. Tyner, the tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins and — onscreen, in the 1986 Bertrand Tavernier film “Round Midnight” — with Mr. Gordon and the pianist Herbie Hancock. From 2004 to 2007, Mr. Hutcherson toured with the first edition of the SFJazz Collective, an ensemble devoted equally to jazz repertory and the creation of new music. He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2010.

After releasing a series of albums on the European label Kind of Blue, he returned to Blue Note in 2014 to release a soul-jazz effort, “Enjoy the View,” with the alto saxophonist David Sanborn and other collaborators.

Speaking in recent years, Mr. Hutcherson was fond of citing a bit of insight from an old friend. “Eric Dolphy said music is like the wind,” he told The San Francisco Chronicle in 2012. “You don’t know where it came from, and you don’t know where it went. You can’t control it. All you can do is get inside the sphere of it and be swept away.”


Here some albums I'd like to recommend.

As leader:

Dialogue (recorded April 3, 1965 ; released September 1965)
220px-Hutcherson_Dialogue.jpg


Happenings (recorded February 6, 1966 ; released End of January 1967)
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Oblique (recorded July 21, 1967 ; released 1980)
Hutcherson_Oblique.jpg


San Francisco (recorded July 15, 1970 ; released Early May 1971)
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As sideman:

Jackie McLean - One Step Beyond (recorded April 30, 1963 ; released January 1964)
One_Step_Beyond_%28Jackie_McLean_album%29.jpg


Grachan Moncur III - Evolution (recorded November 21, 1963 ; released April 1964)
220px-Evolution_%28Grachan_Moncur_III_album%29.jpg


Grant Green - Idle Moments (recorded November 4 & 15, 1963 ; released February 1965)
220px-Idle_Moments.jpg


Andrew Hill - Judgment! (recorded 8 January 1964 ; released September 1964)
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Tony Williams - Life Time (recorded August 21 & 24, 1964 ; released 1964)
220px-Life_Time_%28Tony_Williams_album%29.jpg


McCoy Tyner - Time for Tyner (recorded 17 May 1968 ; released August 1969)
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John Coltrane / Archie Shepp - New Thing at Newport (recorded July 2, 1965)
New_Thing_At_Newport.jpg



Fare well Mr Hutcherson!
 
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Toots Thielemans, the legendary harmonica player, died yesterday at age 94. Everyone wanted to play with him, he got to play with everyone he wanted.
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The man even toured with Charlie Parker. (Will add more artists later)
 
Rudy Van Gelder died.
26vangelder-obit-master768.jpg

This man seems immortal with such a contribution to this genre and studio recording. His immense recording catalogue is unreal. So cool to browse through these sessions (turning into albums) and line-ups.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/26/a...jazz-on-record-dies-at-91.html?mwrsm=Facebook

Rudy Van Gelder, an audio engineer whose work with Miles Davis, John Coltrane and numerous other musicians helped define the sound of jazz on record, died on Thursday at his home, which doubled as his studio, in Englewood Cliffs, N.J. He was 91.

His death was confirmed by his assistant, Maureen Sickler.

Mr. Van Gelder, as he took pains to explain to interviewers, was an engineer and not a producer. He was not in charge of the sessions he recorded; he did not hire the musicians or play any role in choosing the repertoire. But he had the final say in what the records sounded like, and he was, in the view of countless producers, musicians and listeners, better at that than anyone.

The many albums he engineered for Blue Note, Prestige, Impulse and other labels in the 1950s and ’60s included acknowledged classics like Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme,” Davis’s “Walkin’,” Herbie Hancock’s “Maiden Voyage,” Sonny Rollins’s “Saxophone Colossus” and Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father.”

In the 1970s he worked primarily for CTI Records, the most commercially successful jazz label of the period, where his discography included hit albums like Esther Phillips’s “What a Diff’rence a Day Makes” and Grover Washington Jr.’s “Mister Magic.”

“I think I’ve been associated with more records, technically, than anybody else in the history of the record business,” Mr. Van Gelder told The New York Times in 1988.

Mr. Van Gelder was reluctant to reveal too many specifics about his recording techniques. But he was clear about his goal: He wanted, he told Marc Myers of the website JazzWax in 2012, “to get electronics to accurately capture the human spirit,” and to make the records he engineered sound “as warm and as realistic as possible.”

Comparing Mr. Van Gelder’s approach to that of other engineers in the journal Current Musicology in 2001, Dan Skea observed, “Whereas earlier jazz recordings seemed to come at the listener from a distance, Van Gelder found ways to approach and capture the music at closer range, and to more clearly convey jazz’s characteristic sense of immediacy.”

Mr. Van Gelder himself put it this way: “When people talk about my albums, they often say the music has ‘space.’ I tried to reproduce a sense of space in the overall sound picture.”

He added: “I used specific microphones located in places that allowed the musicians to sound as though they were playing from different locations in the room, which in reality they were. This created a sensation of dimension and depth.”

He also prided himself on being at the cutting edge of recording technology. He was one of the first engineers in the United States to use the state-of-the-art microphones made by the German company Neumann (because, he said, a Neumann “could capture sounds that other microphones couldn’t”). He was early to embrace magnetic recording tape and then digital recording.

Rudolph Van Gelder was born in Jersey City on Nov. 2, 1924. His parents, Louis Van Gelder and the former Sarah Cohen, ran a women’s clothing store in Passaic, N.J.

He became interested in jazz at an early age — he played trumpet, although by his own account not well — while developing a parallel passion for sound technology. When he was 12 he acquired a home recording device that included a turntable and discs. In high school he became a ham radio operator.

But he did not originally think he could make a living as a recording engineer, and attended the Pennsylvania College of Optometry in Philadelphia. “I felt that studying optometry would give me the mental discipline I needed and a steady income after I graduated,” he later recalled.

For more than a decade he was an optometrist by day and a recording engineer in his spare time.

He originally worked out of a studio in his parents’ living room in Hackensack, N.J. Not until 1959 — by which time he had already engineered some of the most celebrated recordings in jazz history — could he afford to make engineering his full-time occupation, shifting his base of operations to an elaborate home studio that he designed himself in Englewood Cliffs.

“I never made much money while practicing optometry after college,” he said in the JazzWax interview. “I made more from making records. But everything I made as an optometrist went into new recording equipment and, eventually, into building my studio in Englewood Cliffs from the ground up.”

In 1952, after he had been recording 78-r.p.m. discs of local musicians and singers for several years, he attracted the attention of Alfred Lion of Blue Note Records, the leading jazz label of the day. Mr. Lion began using him regularly, and other record companies quickly followed suit.

Mr. Van Gelder was known not just for his skill as an engineer but also for his fastidiousness, as exemplified by his insistence on wearing gloves while working. “I was the guy doing everything — setting up the chairs, running the floor cables, setting the microphones, working the console,” he explained in 2012. “I didn’t want to handle all of my fine, expensive equipment with dirty hands.”

Unlike many audio engineers, Mr. Van Gelder was involved in every aspect of making records, from preparation to mastering, the final stage in the process, in which the music on tape was transferred to disc for record-plant pressing. “I always wanted to be in control of the entire recording chain,” he said. “Why not? It had my name on it.”

In 1999 he began remastering many of his Blue Note sessions for CD; the results were released to much fanfare as the Rudy Van Gelder Editions. He later did the same for his Prestige and CTI recordings.

Mr. Van Gelder was married twice; both marriages ended with his wives’ deaths. He is survived by a brother, Leon.

He was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2009 and received lifetime achievement awards from the Recording Academy in 2012 and the Audio Engineering Society in 2013.

When he learned that he would be honored by the N.E.A. at a ceremony in New York, Mr. Van Gelder said in a statement, “I thought of all the great jazz musicians I’ve recorded through the years, how lucky I’ve been that the producers I worked with had enough faith in me to bring those musicians to me to record.”

And then, he added, “I thought, ‘I’ll have to get a suit.’”
 
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