Producer’s Note: Tom Dowd

14 years ago today, the music world lost one of its greatest recording engineers and producers: Tom Dowd, a man so brilliant that he’d already been a part of the Manhattan Project before he ever started his career in the music industry.

That’s true, by the way, even though it sounds too absurd to be so, and if you’d like to learn more about this legendary figure, you should immediately seek out the documentary Tom Dowd and the Language of Music.

But trying to learn about a man whose career was all about music by watching a movie is a bit like that whole “dancing about architecture” thing: to really get an idea about why Tom Dowd is a legend, you need to listen to the music he helped bring into the world. That’s why we’ve created a playlist for your listening enjoyment as well as your education: as you listen to it, be aware that Dowd has worked with every single one of the artists included within.

John Coltrane? Yep. Aretha Franklin? You bet. Iron Butterfly? Little Richard? Bette Midler? Primal Scream? Check, check, check, and check.

Seriously, Tom Dowd is awesome. Tell the world.