Ray Charles and Eric Clapton called him a friend. Many others in the music industry called him a pioneer of modern recording techniques.
From his work engineering jazz and R&B songs for Atlantic and Stax Records, to his collaboration with Southern rockers Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Allman Brothers Band, Tom Dowd was a musical fixture for more than half a century.
Dowd was 77 when he died in 2002. Now his story is being told in a documentary called Tom Dowd & the Language of Music.
The film, available on DVD, features rare clips of John Coltrane, Otis Redding, Thelonius Monk and many others who benefited from Dowd’s work.
“The idea was to get Tom the recognition he deserved,” said Mark Moormann, the director.
The slim, energetic Dowd is featured throughout the documentary, telling stories from behind his salt-and pepper beard. The film includes old photographs, vintage video and revealing interviews with artists such as Clapton and Charles.
In one magical scene, the blind Charles talks about Dowd before the engineer informs the star that Dowd has been in the room the entire time.
Dowd was so important to Charles’ music that his character is portrayed in the biopic Ray, which is released today. Dowd’s character is played by actor Rick Gomez, who studied the documentary.
“Everybody was telling me he’s this Forrest Gump ... of music, and in Mark’s documentary you see it,” Gomez said. ”His journey is so interesting.”
At age 16, Dowd began working on the top-secret Manhattan Project that build the atomic bomb, travelling to the South Pacific to study bomb tests and mushroom clouds.
He returned to New York City and, relying on his musical education as a youth, left nuclear physics and started working as a sound engineer. Freelancing in music studios, he learned that recording rules were made to be broken.
In 1947, Dowd put a microphone in front of each instrument in the recording studio. He is credited with that recording innovation – before then, musicians played around a single mike.
Dowd kept breaking ground throughout the 1950s, using his knowledge of science and music. He built a library of stereo recordings before anyone else, allowing Atlantic Records to be ahead of the curve when stereo technology developed.
With Atlantic, he helped develop the first multitrack recording system, which allowed engineers, for the first time, to have several tries to make the perfect recording.
Then, in a visit to guitar legend Les Paul’s house, he saw the first-known eight-track recording machine and was fascinated. Paul was using the machine to record and mix separate guitar and voice tracks into songs.
“A whole new art form opened up,” Dowd says in the film.
He then took his knowledge to the capitals of recording. He stopped in Memphis, Tennessee, where he met Stax Records and Redding. he also went to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, where he recorded Aretha Franklin’s Respect.
After moving to Miami, he teamed up with The Allman Brothers Band – and it was Dowd who helped unite Clapton and Duane Allman for the laydown of Layla. The guitar greats played together on the cut, credited to Derek and the Dominos.
In 1992, Dowd was among seven recipients of a Grammy award for album notes, having co-written the liner for Franklin’s Queen of Soul – The Atlantic Recordings album. Ten years later, Dowd received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
Throughout his travels, Dowd made friends wherever he went. “Put it to you this way, he’s probably the most positive human being you’ll ever meet,” producer Phil Ramone says in the film. “He was kind of a role model for me.”
When Dowd died, he left behind his wife, Cheryl, a daughter, Dana, and sons Todd and Steven.
Standing among rows of platinum and gold albums that line the walls of Criteria, Dana Dowd, 26, says her father’s warmth, generosity and love of music attracted people to him.
“I want everyone to be able to see what a spectacular person he was,” she said. “I couldn’t ask for more.”
