Tom Dowd & the Language of Music

The correlation between music and math, if not explicit, is seldom documented with as much panache as Tom Dowd & the Language of Music. Dowd was one of the Atlantic Three; while Ahmet Ertegun and Jerry Wexler scouted talent, Dowd, a young physics student straight out of the university, recorded it and engineered it. Recorded, engineered Bird, Diz, Prez. Otis and Aretha. Coltrane. Skynyrd. Introduced Allman to Clapton. Standardized eight-track recording. Helped make the atomic bomb. Dowd, who died Oct. 27, 2002, was a similar force in modern music, and producer/director Mark Moormann preserves ground zero with jaw-dropping archival footage, music, and mathematical precision.