Tom Dowd and the Language of Music

thanks for the tip.
never heard of this film, sounds cool. i don't netflix, but i will try and track it down.....

I wanna see this. I was just DIGGING Tom's way cool recording of J Coltrane and band last night (Tommy Flanagan is the man), etc, TD obv KNOWS recording in a way (what w/the difficulty of such back in his youth) v few else get to

I liked it, it was well done. I still don't think he's as well known as he should be. The guy's a genius, it's just indisputable.

The best part was at the end when he was playing around with the mixer while listening to "Layla."

Now they need to do one about Rudy Van Gelder.

I second the suggestion; I knew nothing of recording or engineering in general or him in particular but it was totally engrossing and informative and affectionate and takes pains to always come back to the music.

I picked up the Dowd documentary a couple of weeks ago, like Keith said, very well done. Some nice snips of old concert footage too (never have seen Otis live...WOW!!!)

Also on a related note, i picked this up-

http://www.concertlivewire.com/temple.htm

from the library, really nice overview of U.S. studio's. Good pieces on Gelder & Bill Putnam. Shame a lot of these places no longer exist. Gonna have to go and buy this one for my own personal reference...

I also heartily recommend this- milton brought it over one night and put it on the screen and we were all enlightened, it's just really odd how many scenes (atomic physics, jazz, psyche, Southern boogie) this person was able to permeate.

he invented faders for mixers and was the first person to put eq's > compressors on a channel bus. I am all for more documentaries on audio engineers, for years they've been completely invisible and they're often more crucially responsible for the actual sound of the record than the producer.

not to mention the part of the film where Cream is having trouble with this song they're working on and Dowd suggests that they shift the downbeat to the one and suddenly it becomes 'sunshine of your love'...

Oh yeah, the Otis footage is great! I had no idea that Booker T and the MGS ever backed him up. Does anyone know how long they played with him or was it just that performance?

I saw the Dowd doc a year ago. He flew down to Memphis in the early days of Stax, fixed their board, which was just sitting there having never been maintained at even minimal level, and then Rufus Thomas came in and said he wanted to record something, and Dowd flew back to NYC with a record called "Walkin' the Dog," threw it on Jerry Wexler's desk and said, "Hey, I made this while I was down there..."

It *was* fascinating how accomplished he was, and privy to some apparently high-level classified shit.

Re Booker T. and Redding--well, they backed him pretty much throughout his short career, that's them on "Try a Little Tenderness" and "Dock of the Bay," the former being one of the great cubist Stax minimalist masterpieces. Was reading Rob Bowman's Stax book last night, trying to find some bit of info, and it was only after '68 that Stax began going down to Alabama to record, calling in Don Davis from Detroit, and distributing records that had been made elsewhere, like "Mr. Big Stuff," which was done down in Jackson, Miss. They had a strange arrangement with Atlantic, which is why Atlantic not Stax put out "Groove Me" by King Floyd, which was offered to Stax who passed on it. Depressing story, actually, of the later days of the label, but at least there's a museum there on McLemore now instead of a vacant lot.

Weren't the Otis clips in this from Monterey Pop?

I don't think so. These clips were in b&w (the Monterey Pop clips are usually shown in color) and seemed to be shot in a smaller club.

clips might've been from when the Stax folks went to Europe?

Right, now I remember the b&w clips. The MG's are backing him in the Monterey Pop footage too.

i love the section of the movie where he re-creates mixing "Layla," isolating Allman and Clapton right before the piano break, their guitars hitting all these crazy harmonics. it sounds insane.