Category Archives: Music et al

Music et al, Music of the 60s

Recording Engineer Tom Dowd

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Recording Engineer Tom Dowd

Remembering and appreciating
October 20, 1925 – October 27, 2002

Tom Dowd

Recording Engineer Tom Dowd

The Triumvirate

The Atlantic Records triumvirate: Ahmet Ertegun, Jerry Wexler, and Tom Dowd.

Thomas John “Tom” Dowd was born on October 20, 1925 in New York City and into a musical atmosphere: his father was a concertmaster, his mother an opera singer.

While attending Columbia University the military drafted him, but he continued to attend Columbia University and also working on the Manhattan Project” the secret development of the atomic bomb.

Recording Engineer Tom Dowd

Recording Engineer Tom Dowd

Physics lab to recording studio

He thought he would continue his studies in nuclear physics, but decided to work in music.

According to his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame bio, “After the war, he was hired as a sound engineer at a New York studio in 1947 and began doing freelance work for Atlantic Records in 1949. Under Dowd’s direction, the label switched from recording onto acetate discs to tape, resulting in improved fidelity and preservation. He introduced the label to stereo recording in 1952. Atlantic hired him as a full-time engineer in 1954. In addition to engineering countless sessions, he built the label’s recording console and designed its eight-track studio.sole and designed its eight-track studio.”

In his memoir, Rhythm & the Blues: A Life in American Music, Jerry Wexler described the relationship between Ahmet Ertegun, himself, and Dowd: “Our gig [Wexler and Ertegun] was to get the music played right and righteous in the studio; Tom’s job was to capture it on tape. It was up to him to find a mix of timbres, bass, treble and midrange; to load a much volume as possible without distortion. Tom pushed [the volume controls] like a painter sorting colors. He turned microphone placement into an art.”

Whose music was Dowd an integral part of? The list is a who’s who of great music over the decades:

  • Bobby Darin’s Mack the Knife
  • John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things
  • Aretha Franklin’s Respect
  • Cream’s Disraeli Gears
  • Allman Brothers Idewild South, Eat a Peach, Live at the Fillmore East
  • Derek and the Dominos’ Layla
  • Lynyrd Skynyrd
  • Ronnie Van Zant
  • Eric Clapton
  • Rod Steward
Recording Engineer Tom Dowd

In his own words…

Here he speaks about the evolution of recording music

Recording Engineer Tom Dowd

Lifetime Achievement

In 2002 he was presented a Lifetime Achievement award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.

Dowd died October 27, 2002 (NYT obit) and in 2003 an outstanding documentary about his life  came out: Tom Dowd and the Language of Music.

Tom Dowd was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012.

Recording Engineer Tom Dowd
Music of the 60s

Wednesday Morning 3am

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Wednesday Morning 3am

Simon & Garfunkel

Released October 19, 1964

1964 v 1965

What is the difference between 1964 and 1965? Listen to the 1964 “Sound of Silence” on Simon and Garfunkel’s debut album, Wednesday Morning 3AM. 

Then listen to Columbia Records producer Tom Wilson’s 1965 overdubbed electrified version re-released on Simon and Garfunel’s Sounds of Silence album and you will hear what that difference is.

When Simon and Garfunkel recorded Wednesday Morning 3am Beatlemania has just blossomed in the USA and Bob Dylan the folk singer was still the pied piper for future folk singers.

Wednesday Morning 3am

Hey Schoolgirl

Wednesday Morning 3am

The Everly Brothers-inspired school friends and aspiring folk singers Simon and Garfunkel. In 1957 they’d had had minor success as Tom and Jerry singing “Hey Schoolgirl” written by Jerry Landis and Tommy Graph. 

Wednesday Morning 3am

He Was My Brother

The song that caught Tom Wilson’s ear was Paul Simon’s “He Was My Brother.” Andrew Goodman was one of the young men that the Ku Klux Klan killed on June 21, 1964. Goodman had also been a classmate of Simon and Garfunkel.  [see Freedom Summer]

Like most folk albums of the time, it was acoustic:

  • Paul Simon – acoustic guitar, banjo on “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream”, vocals
  • Barry Kornfeld – acoustic guitar
  • Bill Lee – acoustic bass

It was a tough year for musicians. Beatlemania had erupted and the band dominated the music of 1964–they had had five #1 songs.

The album had no commercial success. Paul Simon went to England to pursue a solo career. Art Garfunkel returned to Columbia to pursue his studies.

Wednesday Morning 3am

Tom Wilson did it

Until Tom Wilson. Tom Wilson was one of Columbia Records main producers. He’d produced Dylan’s break-out electric album, Bringing’ It All Back Home. Bob wasn’t working on Maggie’s farm no more. Wilson gathered a few electric musicians and overdubbed “Sounds of Silence.”

That version is the version we are mainly familiar with. The electric version. The version with drums.

The song, as we already know, became a huge hit. One of the biggest songs in the American songbook and is included in the  National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress.

Wednesday Morning 3am

Try try again

Image result for sounds of silence album cover

With the success of the single, the duo reformed and recorded The Sounds of Silence album. Recorded in the middle of 1965 and released in early 1966. Its success led to fans noticing their Wednesday Morning 3am.

Here are the track listings for the album:

  • You Can Tell the World
  • Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream
  • Bleeker Street*
  • Sparrow*
  • Benedictus
  • The Sound of Silence*
  • He Was My Brother*
  • Peggy O
  • Go Tell It on the Mountain
  • The Sun is Burning
  • The Times They Are a-Changin
  • Wednesday Morning 3am*

The asterisk indicates Paul Simon (aka Paul Kane) compositions. Like many upcoming artists who became famous because of their compostional genius, Simon was still on a learning curve.

Columbia Records staff photographer Henry Parker had taken the album’s cover photo on the lower subway platform at Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street, New York City. Art Garfunkel  has related that during the photo session many of pictures Parker took were unusable due to the “old familiar suggestion” on the wall.  Those type of graffiti inspired Paul Simon to write the song “A Poem on the Underground Wall” for the duo’s later Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme album.

Here’s is AllMusic’s current review of Wednesday Morning 3 AM.

Wednesday Morning 3am

By the way, the location of the Wednesday Morning 3am album cover was the lower subway platform at Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street, New York City.

Wednesday Morning 3am
Music et al, Music of the 60s, Today in history

Robert Moog Herbert Deutsch

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Robert Moog Herbert Deutsch

Introduced their synthesizer on October 12, 1964.
Herbert Deutsch speaking about its development:
“The Minotaur” from Moog: The Electric Eclectics of Dick Hyman
Robert Moog Herbert Deutsch

Sound effects

special effects when radio was theater of the mind | Old time radio, Radio play, Vintage radio

Born in 1950, I just missed the excitement of radio shows and how their sound effects made the stories “real.”  Early TV shows and movies occasionally showed those radio station sets and revealed how clever sound technicians recreated the real world with “fake” noise. Need the sound of a door closing? Close a door. Need the sound of thunder?  Move a large, thin sheet of copper suspended from a frame by wires.

Robert Moog Herbert Deutsch

Electronic Music

 

The mixture of electricity and sound effects created new possibilities.  Around 1896, Thaddeus Cahill developed the Telharmonium. Much like later electric organs, it used wire to transmit sound to horn speakers.

Leon Theremin developed a much simpler instrument. Below you can watch him demonstrate it. He used it much like a violin. Unfortunately for him, I suppose, most Boomers hear a Theremin (aka, the aetherphone) and think of space invasion movies.

Robert Moog Herbert Deutsch

Laurens Hammond

Laurens Hammond established his company in 1929 for the manufacture of electronic instruments. His Hammond organ used the same principals that the Telharmonium had used.

As electronics got more sophisticated, so did technicians’ ability to create more sophisticated instruments.

“Moeg“

In 1963 Robert Moog (pronounced “Moeg” like Moe of the Three Stooges not “Moooog” like Daisy the Cow) and Herbert Deutsch met. Deutsch was a musician; Moog a technician. Together they came up with the idea of making a user-friendly electronic keyboard that had a huge range of sound. Much wider than even a Hammond organ.

And on October 12,  1964, Moog and Deutsch introduced and demonstrated their music synthesizer at the convention of the Audio Engineering Society in NYC.

Beatles and Moog

Robert Moog Herbert Deutsch

While the instrument and its later refinements did not catch on immediately, it gradually became a huge part of rock music. The Beatles (of course) via George Harrison (of course) used a Moog on their last recordings together:

  • the wind at the end of “I Want You (She’s So Heavy)”? Moog.
  • that lovely counterpoint to the acoustic guitar that gently slides in at the beginning of “Here Comes the Sun” ? Moog.
  • “Because” uses the Moog as well.

Reaction

What was the reaction to the Moog? Ed Ward of Rolling Stone magazine reviewed Abbey Road and though that the Moog “disembodies and artificializes” the band’s sound. He added that they “create a sound that could not possibly exist outside the studio.”

Since the Beatles weren’t touring or performing live, that wasn’t a problem. Having said that, if anyone has ever experienced the Fab Faux in concert and their eerie ability to play Beatles music of any era, then Ward’s comment is untrue.

What do you think?

Robert Moog Herbert Deutsch

EDM

In any case, it was was nice that Mr Moog and Mr Deutsche met and gave us a whole world of sound to add to our library.

A reader of this blog added an interesting comment: …and don’t forget Dick Hyman’s album of Moog music, which included the song, The Minitaur, which found its way into the Emerson, Lake, and Palmer playlist.

That album is: Moog – The Electric Eclectics Of Dick Hyman

Herbert Deutsch is a Professor Emeritus of Music at Hofstra University and is a visiting professor at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University.

Bob Moog died in 2005, but his legacy lives on.

Robert Moog Herbert Deutsch