Atlantic Records - Tom Dowd

Tom Dowd

Recording engineer and producer Tom Dowd played a crucial role in Atlantic's success. He initially worked for Atlantic on a freelance basis, but within a few years he had been hired as the label's full-time staff engineer. His recordings for Atlantic and Stax exerted a major influence on the history of popular music and he scored more hits than George Martin and Phil Spector combined. As Atlantic's studio engineer Tom Dowd oversaw many advances in production.

Atlantic was one of the first independent labels to make recordings in stereo: Dowd used a portable stereo recorder which ran simultaneously with the studio's existing mono recorder. In 1953 (according to Billboard) Atantic was the first label to issue commercial LPs recorded in the early, experimental stereo system called binaural recording. In this system, recordings were made using two microphones, spaced at approximately the distance between the human ears, and the left and right channels were cut as two separate, parallel grooves, although playing them back required a player with a special tone-arm fitted with dual needles; it was not until around 1958 that the single stylus microgroove system (in which the two stereo channels were cut into either side of a single groove) became the industry standard. By the late 1950s stereo LPs and record players were being introduced into the marketplace. Atlantic's early stereo recordings included "Lover's Question" by Clyde McPhatter, "What Am I Living For" by Chuck Willis, "I Cried a Tear" by LaVern Baker, "Splish Splash" by Bobby Darin, "Yakety Yak" by the Coasters and "What'd I Say" by Ray Charles. Although these were primarily 45rpm mono singles for much of the 1950s Dowd stockpiled his "parallel" stereo takes for future release. In 1968 the label issued History of Rhythm and Blues, Volume 4 (Atlantic SD-8164) in stereo and the stereo versions of Ray Charles "What'd I Say" and "Night Time is the Right Time" were also included on the Atlantic anthology The Birth Of Soul: The Complete Atlantic Rhythm & Blues Recordings, 1952-1959.

Atlantic's New York studio was also the first in America to install multitrack recording machines, developed by the Ampex company. Bobby Darin's "Splish, Splash" was the first song to be recorded on 8-track recorder whereas it was not until the mid-1960s that multitrackers became the norm in recording studios and EMI's Abbey Road Studios did not install 8-track facilities until 1968.

The label entered the new LP market very early: its first was a 10" album of poetry by Walter Benton, This Is My Beloved (March 1949), narrated by John Dall, with music by Vernon Duke In 1951, Atlantic was one of the first independents to press records in the new 45rpm single format, and by 1956 the "45" had overtaken the "78" as the main sales format for singles. In April that year, Miriam (Abramson) Bienstock reported to Billboard that Atlantic was now selling 75% of its singles as 45s whereas only one year earlier 78s had been outselling 45s by two to one.