Born in
East Cleveland, Ohio, he grew up in New York City. After graduating he worked in
record stores, and then selling and installing audio equipment, before being employed by inventor
Sherman Fairchild as an audio engineer. He also began recording performers in
folk clubs in New York, such as the
Village Gate, working on the sound system in parallel with lighting engineer
Chip Monck. His first commercially released
live recordings were of Nina Simone, released on the albums
Nina at the Village Gate (1962) and
Nina Simone at Carnegie Hall (1963). He also recorded performances by
Thelonious Monk, and early Bob Dylan performances eventually released many years later as
Live at The Gaslight 1962. In 1962, he designed and built RLA Studios in New York, and the following year began working with Harry Belafonte on his live sound system. The studios later became Impact Studios after Belafonte took a financial share.
Albert Grossman then invited Alderson to produce the live sound for Dylan on his groundbreaking
England and
world tours in 1965–66 with
The Band. In the same period, Alderson continued to engineer and then produce recordings in New York, for
Fania Records artists such as
Joe Bataan, as well as
jazz sessions for
Prestige Records. In the mid and late 1960s, he worked extensively for
ESP-Disk Records, on artists such as
Albert Ayler,
Patty Waters, Sun Ra, The Fugs and Pearls Before Swine. Several incorporated Alderson's innovative use of
musique concrète recordings,
tape splicing and exotic percussion instruments. Other musicians with whom he worked in the 1960s included
Muddy Waters,
Spanky and Our Gang and
The Last Poets, as well as
gospel musicians. In 1969, Alderson moved to
Chiapas,
Mexico, where he spent several years forming his own band and recording the indigenous music of the region, later released by
Smithsonian Folkways. He returned to New York in 1975, and set up Rosebud Recording with
Ralph MacDonald. While there, he oversaw recordings by Grover Washington Jr., Roberta Flack,
Bill Withers and
David Sanborn, among others. From the 1980s, he continued to work as an engineer and consultant, setting up Alderson Acoustics and designing a variety of recording facilities in and around New York. He also worked on
jingles and TV commercials, and on projects with producer and arranger
Rob Mounsey. In 2010, Alderson was nominated for a
Grammy in the Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical section, for singer-songwriter Leslie Mendelson's album
Swan Feathers. ==References==