Help Fund the Tom Dowd Archive and Preserve the Legacy

PLEASE HELP PRESERVE THE LEGACY OF ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE IN MODERN MUSIC!!

Q. What do 8-track recording, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, John Coltrane, Aretha Franklin, The Allman Brothers Band, and the atom bomb have in common ????

A. Tom Dowd !!!!

Thomas J. Dowd Jr. (Tom or “Tommy” to those closest to him) was born on October 20th, 1925, in New York City, NY to a musical family involved in theater and opera. Learning piano from his classically trained mother, and also being a whiz at science and math while attending the prestigious Stuyvesant High School, Tom also began taking classes at CCNY and Columbia University while playing in the Columbia University Band. Tom graduated Stuyvesant in 1942 and entered Columbia University where he worked in the Pupin Physics laboratory washing tester tubes as a “civilian” Upon his 18th birthday he was sent for basic training and was immediately sent back to the Pupin Physics laboratory, this time as an overnight radiation tester for the Cyclotron. By now Tom had reached the rank of Sargent in the US Army Corp of Engineers. All of this work would later become known as being part of "The Manhattan Project". Tom was then sent with a team of engineers to the Pacific Islands to be a radiation tester for “Operation Crossroads” Arthur and Baker Tests.

Returning to New York after being honorably discharged from the Army, Tom thought he would attend college, get credit for his work and seek a degree in physics or chemistry. Thankfully, fate had a different path for Tom as upon his return everything that he had learned and contributed to was “top secret”. Incredibly he now had more knowledge of chemistry and physics than his own professors!

It was now 1947, Tom was 21- years old, didn't know what he would do for the rest of his life. He answered a job ad as a 2nd engineer at a recording studio in NYC and within a year, had worked his way up to engineer on smaller sessions. As fate would have it, at the same time a young Herb Abramson and Ahmet Ertegun had just started Atlantic Records. They met Tom by chance at a session and were impressed by the young man. Tom continued to work freelance for several studios around the NYC area for the next 5 years, and Herb and Ahmet called on Tom as their engineer more often than not. By 1952 Atlantic Records could afford a staff engineer, they chose Tom for that groundbreaking role, making him the 5th ever employee of the now historic label.

While science’s loss was music gain, the Atlantic Records team embarked on a journey that would help change the trajectory of music to include Tom. Thereafter Tom reached out to his buddy Les Paul who he had heard on a recent recording utilizing an 8-track machine. Tom promptly ordered the 3rd 8-track machine that AMPEX ever made and Atlantic Records became the 1st commercial recording studio/label to record in 8-track revolutionizing music production and recording. Later Tom invented a linear fader recording console with slide faders taking Bakelite knobs out of the equation and thereby created the 1st ever modern-day recording console. Stereo recording began taking the recording industry by storm. In fact, it was Tom who introduced 8-track to George Martin and the Beatles in 1967!

During his time both at Atlantic and later as a freelance engineer and producer, Tom worked with a veritable "who's who" of music royalty. It's not an overstatement to state that every modern music fan owns an album that was either engineered or produced by Tom Dowd. Ray Charles’s “What I’d Say”. Coltrane's "Giant Steps", Aretha's "Young, Gifted, and Black", The Allman Brothers "Eat a Peach", Eric Clapton's " 461 Ocean Boulevard", Derek and the Dominoes "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs", Rod Stewart's "Atlantic Crossing", Lynyrd Skynyrd's "One More from the Road" and Joe Bonamassa’s first solo album ”A New Day Yesterday” to name just a few of the many classics that are part of the Tom Dowd discography.

While Tom’s career in music lasted up until shortly before his death in October of 2002, the majority of Tom’s last decade was spent mentoring new talent, guest lecturing and beginning to write a memoir. Those writings were loosely used as the treatment for an award-winning documentary “Tom Dowd & the Language of Music” which premiered at Sundance film festival shortly after Tom’s passing. Thereafter Tom’s daughter Dana (executor of Tom’s Estate who also assisted in historical accuracy, rights & clearances and marketing for the documentary) knew the next step was to complete her father’s memoir.

Since then, Dana has spent thousands of hours organizing and high-resolution digitizing Tom’s files, studio notes, press and photos to incorporate into the book. She has created a comprehensive discography of her father’s life’s work. Diligently working on filling in the blanks to complete the memoir, Dana has found files that include “book two”, a preliminary re-write of several chapters, additional chapters, notes Tom had left on recordings he never received credit for and his lecture notes. Dana has spent hundreds of hours speaking with music industry historians and luminaries for historical accuracy and hundreds of hours in libraries researching her family history and her grandparents in particular which gives a much more in-depth awareness as to why Tom’s career in music was written in the stars.

Along with the thousands of hours spent thus far, Dana has acquired a large air-conditioned storage room, expensive weather resistant archival storage materials to preserve the archive, a costly high-resolution scanner, large format backup drives, cloud storage and organizational programs, and various other necessary equipment and materials in order to perform and complete the project in a manner befitting the subject matter.

There is still thousands of hours of archiving, research and organization to be done.

Today, we are asking for your support in helping to fund the remainder of Dana’s efforts so she can continue working diligently on completing the archive. Her goal is to have Tom’s memoir published in late 2025 with never-before-seen historical documents and photos of the likes of The Allman Brothers Band, Eric Clapton, Lynyrd Skynyrd and Rod Stewart all included in the final product.

Your contribution to these efforts in preserving Tom’s legacy are appreciated beyond measure.

Disclaimer: No raffles, sweepstakes, giveaways, or returns on investment are offered in exchange for any donations made to this GoFundMe.

(Please note that we have been working on grant funding for years, and are actively pursuing some as well but it simply does not cover “all” the costs associated with this project as many grants have restrictions and nuances)