[ I had started a new topic then saw this was already posted, but I'm not editing what I already wrote ]
I just finished watching
this. For those of you that don't know, Dowd was a pioneering engineer and later producer for Atlantic Records who has worked with damn near every giant of popular music for the past sixty years.
The DVD alone includes clips or interviews with Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler, Ray Charles, Tito Puente, Thelonious Monk, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Charles Mingus, Les Paul, Bobby Darin, The Platters, The Coasters, Otis Redding, Booker T. & the MGs, Aretha Franklin, Allman Brothers Band, Cream, Eric Clapton, Lynyrd Skynyrd and god knows who else.
He's a really fascinating guy not only musically but personally. He worked on the Manhattan Project and the Atomic Bomb tests in the Bikini Atoll, but left Columbia to go into the record business full-time because they couldn't teach him about the physics he already knew existed from his work for the government.
He appears to be a complete yet unassuming genius who loves what he does. Even more interesting is that he comes across as someone who you could just approach on the street and talk to without getting blown off or cussed. Two Fu's up.
