Rudolph Van Gelder was born November 2, 1924, and trained as an optometrist at the Pennsylvania College of Optometry in Philadelphia. For more than a decade, he practiced optometry by day and recorded jazz sessions by night and on weekends, initially in his parents' living room in Hackensack, New Jersey, giving each record label a designated day of the week for their sessions. In 1959 he opened a purpose-built studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, and, working alongside Blue Note co-founder Alfred Lion, changed the way jazz was recorded.

Van Gelder was Blue Note's go-to engineer from 1953 to 1972, capturing landmark sessions including Sonny Rollins's Saxophone Colossus, Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage, and Horace Silver's Song for My Father. His Englewood Cliffs studio also hosted sessions for Impulse! (including John Coltrane's A Love Supreme), Verve, and, starting in the 1970s, Creed Taylor's CTI Records, where his engineering was one third of the label's signature production formula alongside photographer Pete Turner's cover art and Don Sebesky's orchestral arrangements. Creed Taylor's own career is covered in full in his JazzProfiles.com profile. Across his roughly six-decade career, Van Gelder is estimated to have recorded, mixed, or mastered more than 2,000 albums.

Van Gelder died August 25, 2016, at age 91.

Van Gelder's engineering approach, warm, present, close-miked, became so closely identified with the Blue Note label's sound that "the Van Gelder sound" is used almost interchangeably with "the Blue Note sound" among collectors; his later CTI work extended that same engineering rigor into the more orchestrated, radio-friendly productions of the crossover-jazz era.