The Supernova that was Jazz-Rock Fusion

As a teen Rudy Van Gelder asked his parents if he could have part of their home in Hackensack, New Jersey, to create a recording studio. The earliest engineering credit given to Rudy and his parents' home-based recording studio goes back to 1938 when Rudy was all of 14-years old. Thus began a career in the music industry that would last well into the 21st Century. For over 70 years Van Gelder Studio brought musicians to across the George Washington Bridge to record their music. Van Gelder Studios had their hand in preserving some of the most ground-breaking music in jazz history--and, for the first 21 years of it, Rudy's parents continued to live in one wing of the U-shaped home, tolerant of their eccentric son's passionate love of music, asking only occasionally that he and his "guests" do a little better job of cleaning up after themselves. (Perhaps this was the reason why Rudy's studios had the rather unusual "no food or drink" policy.)       When...

Trombonist Julian Priester spent two-years with Herbie Hancock as part of the lineup of musicians that produced the three ground-breaking "Mwandishi" albums and concert tours. Herbie's own patience and enjoyment of the Mwandishi lineup and style had waned; he was ready to make people happy--to make fun, enjoyable music; he wanted to start a funk band. Thus, the Mwandishi lineup was disbanded in the Spring of 1973 and Julian, like his bandmates, found himself without a band and without a job. But he was riding enough inspiration from the Mwandishi gigs to want to make a studio album of his own--the result being the Love, Love  album--an album made up of his own compositions and involving the participation of several of his collaborators from the Mwandishi lineups. Several of these other Mwandishi band members had already begun to produce "solo" albums--a couple of them even being blessed with the presence of not only many of the Mwandishi lineup but even the fear...