Biography

Legendary jazz recording engineer.

He attended optometry school in Philadelphia and practiced optometry, while keeping music recording as a hobby. Demand for his recording skills grew; with a loan from his parents, he built a control room off the family living room. Blue Note Records founder Alfred Lion heard about him and hired him.

His original Hackensack, New Jersey studio was immortalized by Thelonious Monk in the instrumental "Hackensack".

His father and uncle played the trumpet, as did he. He was interested in ham radio, which led to an interest in recording. He set up a monaural tape recorder in his family's living room and invited his musician friends over to play.

There was no recording industry, really, when I started in all this, and so as I pursued recording as a hobby, I became that kid from New Jersey whom jazz musicians would come to see. The fact that, after a while, people started paying me for this was a surprise, although I'm happy about that now.