Bill Dowdy

Bill Dowdy ( born August 15, 1933, Arkansas) is an American jazz drummer and music teacher.

Dowdy grew up in Benton Harbor, Michigan. He studied piano and percussion at the high school and studied there from 1954 at Roosevelt University in Chicago, had his own band called " Club 49 Trio" in 1949, with whom he has been sent on the radio in Chicago. He worked in blues bands and, inter alia, with Johnny Griffin and J. J. Johnson. In 1956, he founded the band The Four Sounds in South Bend, Ind., and then played with Gene Harris and Andy Simpkins jazz trio The Three Sounds. Together they took over ten albums of the 1950s on into the early 1970s. Also, Dowdy with Lester Young, Lou Donaldson, Nat Adderley, Johnny Griffin, Anita O'Day and Sonny Stitt played.

His idols were Gene Krupa, Max Roach, Roy Haynes and Tony Williams.

Dowdy settled in Battle Creek and worked in a music shop, but eventually opened as his own business. Dowdy also worked as a music teacher for piano and percussion.