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CounterPunch
November
23, 2002
Another Friend
Gone Missing
Spirit in the Light
by DAVE MARSH
I bet you anything if you tried hard enough, you
could find someone who didn't like Tom Dowd. It wouldn't be anybody
I ever met, but there must be somebody out there.
As a young scientist at Columbia University,
Tommy Dowd worked on the Manhattan Project. Later, he co-produced
Dusty in Memphis. In between, he engineered some of the greatest
records of all time--listen especially to the Ray Charles albums
and the jazz records by Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman and John
Coltrane on Atlantic to see how early he understood the possibilities
of multi-track recording and the use of space in mixes. In the
'60s, when he began producing as well as engineering, he and
Arif Mardin made to my ear the greatest Aretha Franklin records,
such as Spirit in the Dark and Young Gifted and Black, and all
the best records by the Rascals and the Allman Brothers ever
did. As an  independent producer beginning in the
'70s, he made most of Eric Clapton's hits, several of Rod Stewart's
biggest, and worked with Lynyrd Skynyrd, among many many other
bands--he seemed to have a special feeling for Southern rock
or maybe it was just his engineer's approach that let those bands
rev up and play.
Although he died a couple of weeks ago,
age 77, his inimitably New York Irish accent shall remain a favorite
aural memory, because except in the most grievous circumstances,
it always overflowed with enthusiasm. Three or four years ago,
Lee Ballinger interviewed him for his Lynyrd
Skynyrd: an oral history. It could have been a difficult
interview, since Dowd's records didn't do well, commercially,
and the band chose not to work with him again. "If necessary,
I'm sure he'd have been willing to talk to me for 5, 10, 24 more
hours on the phone," Lee told me recently. "From my
limited experience with him, I would say he was that rare artist
who neither plays up nor plays down what he actually did. Unusual
since most people need to play it up in order to keep working."
Ballinger added, "When he was telling
me about getting ready to go in the studio for the next Allmans,
he sounded as if he were going in there to do Eat A Peach or
Live at Fillmore East. Fired up, couldn't wait." That's
how he always was.
Young Tom Dowd impressed Ahmet Ertegun
and his confederates so much that they offered him a job as Atlantic's
house engineer as soon as they could afford to. Dowd had a gift
for grabbing great performances on the fly. But he wasn't a rustic--he
convinced Atlantic to buy one of the first eight-track recorders,
so there is a lot more of the label's greatest R&B and jazz
in stereo than anywhere else. His collaboration with Arif Mardin
on the Rascals and Aretha records represents a rare blending
of pure feel with maximum technical skill-and though Arif is
the most musical of men, Dowd brought plenty of the feel. As
Sue Martinez wrote in response to his passing: "If I were
to write a memoir in the form of a discography, Tom Dowd's hands
would appear at nearly every turning point." To the best
of my knoweldge, Tommy bragged about nothing, although he did
tell great stories. He was sure of his work (and knew its limits),
a humble gentleman in a world that has damned few of either,
a great listener, an honest man from beginning to end,
and in his quiet way, a real champion of artists. In some ways,
he got treated like an artist-it was years before he got
production royalties, for instance.
I genuinely loved every minute I got
to spend with him. So if ever I should encounter that person
who didn't love Tom Dowd, it would be easy to know what to do.
Embrace them and tell them how great it was going to be when
they found out when they what they'd been missing.
Who knows what such an embrace would
do for the poor soul? But it would offer me a chance to feel
more like Tom, and that would be a great thing.
"There is a wisdom that is woe;
but there is a woe that is madness. And there is a Catskill eagle
in some souls that can alike dive down into the blackest gorges,
and soar out of them again and become invisible in the sunny
spaces. And even if he for ever flies within the gorge, that
gorge is in the mountains; so that even in his lowest swoop the
mountain eagle is still higher than other birds upon the plain,
even though they soar."
Herman Melville, Moby Dick
DeskScan
(what's playing in my office)
1. No
Stranger to Shame, Uncle Kracker (Lava)-Kid Rock's blue-eyed
soul protégé does a devastating "Drift Away"
duet with Dobie Gray, and pours his sweet, nasty heart out on
"Letter to My Daughter." Mainly this reminds me of
a vintage Southern rock album. Hmm: Eminem, Kid Rock, this guy.
Have the shores of Lake Huron become the new Redneck Riviera?
2. Sam
Cooke with the Soul Stirrers: The Complete Specialty Recordings
(Fantasy, 3 disc box)-The greatest music Cooke ever made.
3. Sucking the '70s (Small Stone, www.smallstone.com
) -- Two discs of contemporary Detroit bands remaking everything
from the MC5, Black Sabbath and Lynyrd Skynyrd to "Black
Betty," "Hymn 43," and "Bron-Yr-Stomp."
Further evidence that you didn't have to be there to understand
that '70s hard rock wins the award for Most Misunderstood.
4. God
and Me, Marion Williams and the Stars of Faith (Collectables)-The
redoubtable Williams's best album plus 12 additional tracks.
5. None
But the Righteous: The Masters of Sacred Steel (RopeADope)-Playing
as smooth as shaving with a new blade and with similarly cleansing
results. That the music world only recently opened itself to
this remarkable and venerable gospel offshoot reflects a silly
intellectual phobia-a plain prejudice against religious music.
Now the great Calvin Cooke has a Warners-distributed album in
the works. In the face of this, may the sound stay pure.
6. The
Genius of the Electric Guitar, Charlie Christian (Columbia
Legacy)-So great that a construction crew that only listens to
country and metal heard it through a wall and asked what the
great sounds were. It'll make a believer out of you about Lionel
Hampton too. Did me, anyhow.
7. "Sad & Dreamy (The Big 1-0),"
Alejandro Escovedo from The
Bottle Let Me Down: Songs for Bumpy Wagon Rides (Bloodshot)-When
Escovedo and Michael Fracasso did a songwriting workshop with
Austin gradeschoolers a couple years ago, one informed them that
since he was about to hit "the big 1-0," "candy
doesn't taste as good anymore." That rough rhyme and a variety
of similar thoughts became this song. Its poignancy spells out
some childhood facts of life that no other song I know gets to.
Charming, beautiful, smart, true.
8. Nothing to Fear, A Rough Mix by Steinski
(bootleg)
9. The
Rising, Bruce Springsteen (Sony)
10. Jerusalem,
Steve Earle (E Squared)
11. Dirty
South Hip-Hop Blues, Chris Thomas King (21st Century
Blues) 12. Southern Hummingbird, Tweet (The Goldmind, Inc/Elektra)
13. Revolverution,
Public Enemy (Koch)
14. The
Naked Ride Home, Jackson Browne (Elektra)
15. Bluegrass
and White Snow,, Patty Loveless (Columbia advance)-Best
bluegrass Christmas album ever.
16.
'Tis the Season for Los Straitjackets! (Yep Roc)-First
good surf instrumental Christmas album I can remember.
17. 8
Mile, Eminem (Shady/Interscope)
18. "The Talking Sounds Just Like
Joe McCarthy Blues," Chris Buhalis (chrisbuhalis.com)
19. Still
Wanna Be Black, Jimmy Lewis (Kent UK)-Raw soul rumbles
out of the Mississippi Delta from '62 to '74. Lewis's sexual
frankness ("There Ain't No Man That Can't Be Caught,"
"Message to the Ladies") is both sit-up-straight adult
and just this side of hilarious.
20. "Shout,"
Lilian Garcia (Universal)-First ever evidence that the professional
wrestling isn't just a bad influence.
Dave Marsh coedits
Rock and Rap Confidential.
Marsh is the author of The
Heart of Rock and Soul: the 1001 Greatest Singles.
He can be reached at: marsh6@optonline.net
Yesterday's
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Heroes and Villains:
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Carol Norris
Secret
Burial for the Bill of Rights
4th Amendment R.I.P
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From Wal-Mart to Proudhon
Michael Neumann
Reflections
on Kant and Moral Equivalence
Philip Farruggio
The Dagger of Futility
Michael Rossman
The Betrayal
of Lenny Glaser
Michael Rossman
The Free Speech Movement & the Rossman Report:
A Memoir of Making History
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Effort, But What Did They Get?
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November 14,
2002
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Paul de Rooij
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