Passion and Dedication are always the factor of someone’s success. In the field of music, there are numerous personalities but only a few of them are known for their talent and expertise. Tom Dowd is one of those famous and renowned personalities.
Tom was an American record engineer who also worked as a producer at Atlantic Records. Since childhood, he was passionate to be in the field of music. While he was a toddler, he used to pay piano, tuba, violin, and string bass which rare to be seen with toddlers of similar age.
He also gets some benefit from his parents as his father was a concertmaster and his mother was an opera singer. He completed his graduation when he was just 16. He then pursued his music degree from the audio engineering school “City College of New York”.
Initially, he joined military as “Sargent”. He worked for some secret task but was unfortunately not recognized for the task. So, he put a halt on that task and divert to another field. After he paused his career in the military, he moved to work in the field of music recording at Atlantic recordings.
There he worked on many recordings and was successful in giving his first hit named Eileen Barton’s “If I Knew You Were Comin’ I’d’ve Baked a Cake”. Some of the other famous records made by this engineer are Ray Charles’ The Genius of Ray Charles, John Coltrane’s Giant Steps, Eric Clapton’s Crossroads.
Have a look on some of the records made by
– ‘Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs’ (1970)
– ‘Live at Fillmore East’ (1971)
– ‘Disraeli Gears’ (1967)
– ‘Idlewild South’ (1970)
– ‘461 Ocean Boulevard’ (1974)
During his 50 years of working as a professional audio engineer, he worked with many famous names on different genres. And because of his dedicated and keen work with different artists, he was proficient in offering new and unique music to the industry.
He was considered to be the reason to encourage Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records for installing Ampex eight-track recorder and making Atlantic Recordings the first company to record the music with multiple tracks. In 1992, he was awarded the Grammy award for the best album notes of the album “Queen of Soul:
The Atlantic Recordings”
27 October was the day when you Tom Dowd left us with and reach the heaven. In 2002, he died of emphysema and left us with many of his famous records that made him alive forever. Tom Dowd was posthumously inspired many directors to make documentary and movie as his biopic. “Tom Dowd and the Language of Music” is a documentary made on his life whereas “Ray” was a biopic directed on his life.
There are only a few of the names that have really given something unique to the mankind. They are the one who has devoted their life living their dream with passion and zeal. Offering a simple thank you will even be less to show our gratitude to such experts.