Article in Stereophile.com:
http://www.stereophile.com/content/rudy-birdlandabout the famous 'Live at Birdland' session that Rudy recorded for BlueNote.
A little irony: Bruce Lundvall, who was the president of Blue Note Records when it was pulled out of mothballs in the early 80s to respond to Columbia's Marsalis coup, was himself in attendance at Birdland on that cold February night in 1953 as a high school teenager. He told me that the atmosphere in the gig was electric, everyone knew something very special was happening. He said the recording only captures a small part of the excitement that night, but what magic does survive on the record has influenced many people to follow jazz music as a career, both musicians and production people alike. I remember James Williams, pianist and music director of Jazz Messengers telling me a list of the famous jazz musicians he knew who were moved by that recording to become musicians. As I remember it, the list was long. He was a great storyteller like that.
My grandmother gave me a copy of it when I was 8 and just starting to play trumpet. She always picked the right gifts to inspire me. It was my first LP that I owned myself. My father thought I was too young to use it, but I played it, and his records too on the little Panasonic system stuffed inside a glass door cabinet. I sat on the floor down with the TT with the speakers way up on the top shelf.
