"That’s one heck of a ’closet’ two track recording system in his parents remodeled living room. It would make sense to have the principle artist in a makeshift recording booth or closet and have the band members mic’d up in the living room."
Interestingly, subscribers in other forums claimed that he monitored his stereo recordings through that single speaker you see over his head and I think I saw a photo somewhere where he isolated and made a control booth so he could hear what he was doing there. I don’t believe there any actual modifications to the living room per se, but he used a technique specifically for stereo where he was able to take the sound of the room out of the equation. Which wasn’t specific to his methods alone as other engineers working in tight quarters had figured out also. You couldn’t just simply drop mics like you could in mono. They often used figure 8s where you could have instrumentalists on either side performing their parts and maybe drop a mike over the drums which may have been positioned in a corner and then blend it all down in the mixing board to make it sound cohesive.
In Rudy’s parent’s living room, you had the drum set in one corner with the grand piano in another and the pianist playing with his back up against the drummer’s ride cymbal. The horns would be crammed in there with them as well as the bass with mic stands and cables everywhere and all of this had no resemblance to the positioning of the artists you hear in the sound scapes Rudy created in the final mix. You also have to remember that the tracks you hear on the record were always done in a single take though there may have been instances where Rudy might splice segments together from say "start at the top" to create a single track.
Though all of my assertions may be speculative, I believe he used cardioid mics in very close proximity to the bell of the horns as well as the drums where he tucked several mics in close to the high hat, ride cymbals, skins of the snare, toms and kick drum and out of the reach of the drummer’s sticks, while keeping the levels as low as possible and blending them all together through multiple channels to create the stereo mix down to two. He’s also famous for placing the mics for the piano in the sound board to isolate them from the clatter going on in the rest of the room. You also have to consider that a grand piano is a big ungainly thing with an enormous acoustic output that could drown out everyone else playing in the room!
If your systems are resolving enough and properly set up for stereo, on a lot of these recordings the drums resolve in very 3D spectacle where the drum set appears from center to right in what seems to me at an angle with the snare, high hat and ride cymbal closest to you in the right speaker and the toms, kick drum and another cymbal, in what would be there correct positions as they’re positioned away from you towards the center of the sound stage. It’s very evident and I get a thrill hearing it especially when they featured some of their best drummers like, Philly Joe Jones, Elvin Jones or Anthony Williams on such notable recording as Hank Mobley’s No Room for Squares, Jackie McLean’s One Step Beyond or Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage.
I’ve been at this for a while guys, so I’ll break now and we can pick this up later and I’m interested to read your comments on what I’ve conjectured. I’d also like to throw some ideas around regarding @stuartk’s comment about Contemporary and Roy DuNann.