Tom Dowd (October 20, 1925 – October 27, 2002) was an
American recording engineer and
producer for
Atlantic Records. He was credited with innovating the
multi-track recording method. Dowd worked on a virtual "who's who" of recordings that encompassed blues, jazz, pop, rock and soul records.
Career
Early years
Born in
Manhattan, Dowd grew up playing piano, tuba, violin, and string bass. His mother was an opera singer and his father was a
concertmaster.
Dowd graduated from Stuyvesant High School in June, 1942 at the age of 16. He continued his musical education at City College of New York. Dowd also played in a band at New York's Columbia University, where he became a conductor. He was also employed at the physics laboratory of Columbia University.
Military work
At age 18, Dowd was
drafted into the military with the rank of
sergeant. He continued his work in physics at Columbia University. He worked on the
Manhattan Project contributing to the
atomic bomb. The purpose of the work was unclear until 1945. Dowd planned to obtain a degree in
nuclear physics when he completed his work on the Manhattan Project. However because his work was top secret the university did not recognize it, and Dowd decided not to continue, since the university's curriculum would not have been able to further his physics education. His research for the military was more advanced than the academia of the times. Dowd received a
Grammy Trustees Award for his lifetime achievements in February 2002.
He died of emphysema on October 27, 2002 in Florida, where he had been living and working at Criteria Studios for many years.
Legacy
Tom Dowd helped to shape the artists that he worked with, and because he worked with an array of great artists on some of the world's greatest recordings, Dowd was highly influential in creating the sound of the second half of the 20th Century. It was he who encouraged
Jerry Wexler of
Atlantic Records to install an
Ampex eight-track recorder, enabling Atlantic to be the first recording company to record using multiple tracks.
Dowd is credited as the engineer who popularized the eight-track recording system for commercial music and popularized the use of stereo sound. Although stereo had been invented in the 1930s, Dowd was the first to use it on a record. He also pioneered the use of linear channel faders as opposed to rotary controls on audio mixers. He devised various methods for altering sound after the initial recording.
In 2003 director Mark Moormann premiered an award-winning documentary about his life entitled Tom Dowd and the Language of Music. In the 2004 biopic Ray, Tom Dowd was portrayed by actor Rick Gomez.
Notes
External links
Tom Dowd and The Language of Music
Discography
Category:1925 births
Category:2002 deaths
Category:People from Manhattan
Category:American record producers
Category:American audio engineers
Category:Manhattan Project people
Category:Stuyvesant High School alumni
Category:Grammy Award winners
