Hi Jim. To borrow a Steely Dan line with regard to my sleeping habits: They call Alabama the Crimson Tide, call me Nosferatu Blue.
What's so amazing about the Van Gelder engineered sound at Hackensack was that he was recording the music out in his living room. When the musicians arrived, they would re-arrange the furniture, take out the mic stands from the closet, set up the equipment and then play to tape. Looking at the dates of some of the sessions, the recording could be a single take or at most it would usually be done in a day or two. Personally I prefer the Hackensack sound over that of Englewood Cliffs if I had to choose one over the other although both are excellent to say the least.
There's another great sound engineer called Roy DuNann who worked for Contemporary/OJC in the West Coast in the late 1950's. He brought great sound out of Sonny Rollins, Art Pepper, Ornette Coleman etc. He was a no nonsense kind of guy who didn't give a hoot about the baggage tags the musicians brought with them to the sessions. DuNann nonchalantly recalled that he wanted to give Sonny Rollins a good kick in the butt for an attitude problem. Probably that best explains how Mr Rollins ended up way out west amongst the cacti in the desert with a posterior so sore he had problems standing straight. And we all thought it was the weight of the sombero that kept him tilting backwards. The skeletal cattle head behind Mr Rollins can't help but gleefully laugh out loud.
Back to Van Our Man, here's something more recent from 2004 done in Englewood:
Eric Alexander - Dead Center
Eric Alexander, tenor saxophone; Harold Mabern, piano; John Webber, bass; Joe Farnsworth, drums.
