Tom Dowd, producer of Aretha Franklin, Allman Bros, Eric Clapton, Rod Stewart, and engineer of dozens of Atlatnic classics dies at 77 in Florida:

Dowd died on Sunday morning at a nursing home in Aventura after fighting a respiratory disease for two years, his daughter, Dana Dowd, said.

"His contribution to music was immense. He covered so many genres over so many years and touched so many lives. He loved what he did,'' she said.

Dowd worked at Atlantic records for more than 20 years before becoming a sought-after independent producer in the mid-1960s. The roster of artists he recorded with included jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, engineering "Giant Steps'' and "My Favorite Things,'' and Charles Mingus.

Soul diva Franklin was one of his personal favorites. Among the hits he helped her create was "Respect.'' He recorded other black artists such as Wilson Pickett, Ray Charles, Otis Redding and James Brown in Florida and Memphis for Atlantic.

His relationship with Clapton was one of his most enduring, lasting from the British guitarist's days with Cream through Derek and the Dominos and his later solo successes. Clapton called him "the ideal recording man'' in a 1996 interview.

Writer Ben Cromer conducted an excellent interview with Dowd for The Encyclopedia of Record Producers a few years ago:

"It's like going from a Piper Cub to landing on the moon," says legendary producer Tom Dowd of the technological changes he has seen since he entered the recording industry more than 50 years ago.

"The recording industry in 1947 was operating on used radio consoles because nobody was designing equipment for recording studios," Dowd explains, adding that he designed the first eight-track console for Atlantic Records because no commercial counterpart was available.

After joining Atlantic in 1954, Dowd became involved in virtually every aspect of the recording process: from the original session to post-production to disc mastering. During his tenure at Atlantic, he worked with such diverse acts as Aretha Franklin, Ornette Coleman, Joe Turner, Charles Mingus, the Drifters and the Young Rascals.

"Every session was an adventure," Dowd recalls. "You could be doing the Coasters at 2 in the afternoon and Mingus at 2 in the morning." Dowd says that Atlantic Records, an independent in its early years, could challenge major labels such as Columbia, Victor, Decca and EMI because it was developing artists "in a market that they didn't know existed, or if they knew existed didn't know how to cope with."

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