Founding Father: Tom Dowd

Who?

If your music collection is remotely comprehensive, pull a few albums or CDs from the shelf at random and it won't be long before you find Tom Dowd's name in the credits. Few engineers or producers in music history have worked with such an array of stars.

Dowd started out to be a physicist, and worked on what became the Manhattan Project while still a student at Columbia University. After the war, he observed nuclear tests in the Pacific. All of his work was classified, and on returning home, he figured out that if he returned to Columbia to study physics, he would be expected to learn concepts that had been made obsolete by what he had seen during the war. For this reason, he took a job at a recording studio instead. Almost accidentally, Dowd engineered a couple of hit records in 1949, including Stick McGhee's Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-o-Dee, which was one of the first smashes on the Atlantic label.

Dowd's list of credits is extraordinary. In the '50s, he recorded many legendary Atlantic artists including Joe Turner, the Drifters, the Coasters and Ray Charles. He also engineered sessions by jazz masters Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane. His list of credits became even more impressive in the '60s as he began producing recordings by Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, the Rascals and Cream (Disraeli Gears and Wheels of Fire). In the '70s, he guided the Allman Brothers Band, recording Idlewild South and producing Live at the Fillmore East. He arranged the meeting between Eric Clapton and Duane Allman that resulted in their collaboration on Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, which he produced. Dowd went on to produce several of Clapton's solo albums, as well as career-defining albums by Lynyrd Skynyrd (Street Survivors, among others) and Rod Stewart. Dowd added some more pop-oriented projects to his resumé in the '80s--albums by Chicago, Eddie Money and Diana Ross among others -- while continuing to work extensively with Clapton and Stewart. His work with the Allmans continued into the new millennium, and included albums by Susan Tedeschi (Wait for Me) and Joe Bonamassa.

When Dowd began recording in the late '40s, musicians played live in the studio, and backed off or got closer to the microphones as needed to tweak the sound. Dowd came up with the idea of miking each instrument individually to more easily mix and balance his recordings. Later, he built the first stereo recording console used at Atlantic. As one of the pioneers multi-track recording, he's at least partly responsible for the way we hear music today.

In 2003, Dowd was the subject of a documentary, Tom Dowd and the Language of Music. The film premiered only a few months after his death in 2002 at age 77. It's must viewing for anybody interested in the history of rock, or in the life of an extremely versatile, interesting, and likable man who, in several different ways, helped make possible some of the most enduring art of our time.

Comments

[Dan Fallon]

Tom Dowd read a testimonial letter written by Jerry Wexler at two of Jesse Stone's birthday celebrations, one before and one after Jesse Stone's death. He shared Jerry Wexler's interest in giving full credit to the contributions of all the key persons at Atlantic Records. Tom Dowd was in the music business principally to participate in the creation of music, not just to make money and seek fame. He was an admirable man.