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Thomas John Dowd (October 20, 1925 – October 27, 2002) was an American recording engineer and Record producer for Atlantic Records. He was credited with innovating the multitrack recording method. Dowd worked on a veritable "who's who" of recordings that encompassed blues, jazz, Pop music, Rock music, and Soul music records.
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 conducting. He was also employed at the physics laboratory of Columbia University.
Dowd worked as an engineer and producer from the 1940s until the beginning of the 21st century. He recorded albums by many artists including Eddie Money, Bee Gees, Eric Clapton, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Black Oak Arkansas, Derek and the Dominos, Rod Stewart, Wishbone Ash, New Model Army, Cream, Lulu, Chicago, the Allman Brothers Band, Joe Bonamassa, the J. Geils Band, Meat Loaf, Sonny & Cher, the Rascals, The Spinners, Willie Nelson, Diana Ross, Eagles, the Four Seasons, Kenny Loggins, James Gang, Dusty Springfield, Eddie Harris, Charles Mingus, Herbie Mann, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Ronnie Earl, Joe Castro and Primal Scream. He was also an employee of Apex Studios in the 1950s. 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, a week after his 77th birthday.
Dowd is credited as the engineer who popularized the eight-track recording system for commercial music and popularized the use of stereophonic sound. 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 about musician Ray Charles, Ray, Tom Dowd was portrayed by actor Rick Gomez.
Dowd was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.
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