25 Facts About Tom Dowd

Thomas John Dowd was an American recording engineer and producer for Atlantic Records.

Tom Dowd was credited with innovating the multitrack recording method.

Tom Dowd worked on a veritable "who's who" of recordings that encompassed blues, jazz, pop, rock, and soul records.

Tom Dowd's mother was an opera singer and his father was a concertmaster.

Tom Dowd graduated from Stuyvesant High School in June 1942 at the age of 16.

Tom Dowd continued his musical education at City College of New York.

Tom Dowd played in a band at New York's Columbia University, where he became a conductor.

Tom Dowd was employed at the physics laboratory of Columbia University.

At age 18, Tom Dowd was drafted into the military with the rank of sergeant.

Tom Dowd continued his work in physics at Columbia University.

Tom Dowd worked on the Manhattan Project, which developed the atomic bomb.

Tom 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 Tom Dowd decided not to continue, since the university's curriculum would not have been able to further his physics education.

Tom Dowd took a job at a classical music recording studio until he obtained employment at Atlantic Records.

Tom Dowd's first hit was Eileen Barton's "If I Knew You Were Comin' I'd've Baked a Cake".

Tom Dowd captured jazz performances by John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Thelonious Monk and Charlie Parker.

Tom Dowd worked as an engineer and producer from the 1940s until the beginning of the 21st century.

Tom Dowd was an employee of Apex Studios in the 1950s.

Tom Dowd received a Grammy Trustees Award for his lifetime achievements in February 2002.

Tom Dowd died of emphysema on October 27,2002, in Florida, where he had been living and working at Criteria Studios for many years, a week after his 77th birthday.

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, Tom Dowd was highly influential in creating the sound of the second half of the 20th century.

Tom Dowd is credited as the engineer who popularized the eight-track recording system for commercial music and popularized the use of stereophonic sound.

Tom Dowd pioneered the use of linear channel faders as opposed to rotary controls on audio mixers.

Tom Dowd devised various methods for altering sound after the initial recording.

Tom Dowd was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.