Tom Dowd and The Language of Music
Monday, October 4th, 2004
Tom Dowd and The Language of Music is a documentary DVD on the life of one of the if not the greatest recording engineer in history.
Watching this DVD is like listening to the soundtracks of movie like The Big Chill or Forrest Gump: the music takes you back through a personal history that’s both different for many of us (who span the time) and the same (we listened to and loved the music).
The number of groups that Tom engineered and some say, made is amazing and they’re all in the DVD: Ray Charles, Otis Redding, Tito Puente, Cream, The Allman Brothers, Booker T and the MGs, Aretha Franklin, Eric Clapton, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Rod Stewart, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and many more.
Tom had a background in physics and electronics and so was the penultimate nerd engineer. But, he was also a musician and he got not only sound but the sound of each artist. He was the first to use an 8 track recording machine and invented the use of slide-bars instead of knobs on sound mixing board, among countless other engineering firsts.
He worked primarily for Atlantic Records and brought many of Atlantic’s most famous names to the label because they wanted to work only with him.
Anyone who loves music and has an interest in history will love this DVD and even though I bought it at Amazon it is available at NetFlix as well. It’s a keeper, consider buying.
