Background
After having gained a reputation in the mid-Fifties for the quality of the recordings he made in the living room at his parents' house in Hackensack, New Jersey, Van Gelder moved to a new facility in Englewood Cliffs. The structure was inspired by the work of Frank Lloyd Wright and bore some resemblance to a chapel, with 39-foot ceilings and fine acoustics. Critic Ira Gitler described the studio in The Space Book (1964) liner notes:"In the high-domed, wooden-beamed, brick-tiled, spare modernity of Rudy Van Gelder's studio, one can get a feeling akin to religion". "When I started making records, there was no quality recording equipment available to me" Van Gelder recalled in 2005. "I had to build my own mixer. The only people who had quality equipment were the big companies. They were building their own electronics."
Notable recordings made at Hackensack include Miles Davis' Workin' and Steamin' ; solo debuts by Hank Mobley (Hank Mobley Quartet) and Johnny Griffin (Introducing Johnny Griffin).
Notable recordings made at Englewood Cliffs include John Coltrane's A Love Supreme (1964); Sonny Rollins' Saxophone Colossus; and Stanley Turrentine's Cherry and Don't Mess with Mister T; Andrew Hill's Point of Departure; Carmell Jones's Jay Hawk Talk; Freddie Hubbard's Red Clay and Hank Mobley's Soul Station.
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