#13: Tom Dowd
Tom Dowd deserves his place not just because he worked on great records, but because he helped change how records could be made. He was an engineering and production pioneer, associated with Atlantic and later with sessions involving Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, the Allman Brothers Band, and many others. He is often credited with helping advance multitrack recording in commercial music, which gave artists and producers much more flexibility in the studio. That sounds technical, and it is, but the artistic result was enormous.

