David Briggs, a keyboardist and studio operator who performed a pivotal position in establishing Muscle Shoals, Ala., as a recording hub within the Nineteen Sixties earlier than serving to to revitalize mainstream nation music, died on Tuesday in Nashville. He was 82.
His brother, John, stated his demise, in a hospice facility, was brought on by problems of renal most cancers.
Mr. Briggs contributed to not only one however two main developments in standard music. As a member of the unique rhythm part at Fame Recording Studios, he helped put the northern Alabama hamlet of Muscle Shoals on the musical map. He performed on landmark R&B recordings like Arthur Alexander’s “You Higher Transfer On” (1962), Jimmy Hughes’s “Steal Away” (1964) and the Tams’ “What Type of Idiot (Do You Suppose I Am)” (1963), all of which had been High 40 pop singles in addition to R&B hits.
The rhythm part at Fame, whose members additionally included Norbert Putnam on bass and Jerry Carrigan on drums, honed a down-home sound that, with its languid mix of nation and soul, stood other than the R&B popping out of Motown or Stax on the time. “You Higher Transfer On” attracted the eye of the Rolling Stones, who launched their model of the music in 1964. (The Beatles had beforehand carried out Mr. Alexander’s “Soldier of Love” on the BBC.)
Mr. Briggs’s different defining second got here when he, Mr. Putnam and Mr. Carrigan moved to Nashville in late 1964 and commenced infusing nation recordings with the understated, groove-rich variant of the Nashville Sound that turned referred to as “countrypolitan.”
“We introduced alongside a extra blues and pop-rock factor than what Nashville was doing on the time,” Mr. Putnam stated in an interview.
He recalled that the singer Ray Stevens, then a prime arranger who labored in each Muscle Shoals and Nashville, as soon as stated, “You guys play the trendy music higher than the A-Workforce we have now in Nashville.”
After just some months in Nashville, Mr. Briggs had distinguished himself as one of many metropolis’s first-call studio keyboard gamers. He would go on to participate in lots of of periods a 12 months into the Nineteen Eighties.
(A wholly completely different rhythm part, referred to as the Swampers, would take up the slack in Muscle Shoals, working with luminaries like Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Wilson Pickett.)
David Paul Briggs was born on March 16, 1943, in Killen, Ala., northeast of Muscle Shoals. He was the elder of two sons of James and Myrtle (Myrick) Briggs. His father was a letter service.
Classically skilled, David started enjoying professionally as an adolescent. He labored in a neighborhood band known as the Crunk Brothers and, by means of them, met Mr. Putnam and in the end gained entree to session work at Fame. Mr. Briggs and Mr. Putnam performed on Tommy Roe’s chart-topping 1962 hit, “Sheila,” and had been members of his backing band when Mr. Roe was a gap act for the Beatles of their first U.S. live performance, in 1964.
Mr. Briggs, in the meantime, had begun writing songs and releasing the occasional file of his personal as each a singer and keyboardist. One was a single produced by Owen Bradley, who urged him to maneuver to Nashville in 1964 to do studio work.
In 1966, Mr. Briggs joined Elvis Presley’s TCB Band, a job he would preserve, alongside along with his session work, till Presley’s demise in 1977.
In 1969, Mr. Briggs and Mr. Putnam opened Quadraphonic Sound, a much-in-demand studio that hosted initiatives by Neil Younger, Dan Fogelberg, Jimmy Buffett and the Jacksons. That 12 months, Mr. Briggs joined Space Code 615, a supergroup of session musicians, together with Mr. Putnam and the guitarist Mac Gayden, who died this month. The band launched a pair of albums of freewheeling nation rock on Polydor Data.
Mr. Briggs and Mr. Putnam additionally based their very own publishing firm, Danor Music, which had success with No. 1 pop hits like Steve Winwood’s “Greater Love” and Whitney Houston’s “Didn’t We Virtually Have It All.”
The 2 males bought Quadraphonic Sound in 1979, however Mr. Briggs opened one other studio, Home of David, three years later. The Blasters, Norah Jones, Bootsy Collins and the indie-rock band Yo La Tengo had been amongst Home of David’s quite a few purchasers, together with B.B. King, for whom Mr. Briggs wrote preparations.
Within the Seventies and ’80s, Mr. Briggs started writing and arranging (and generally singing) jingles for Coca-Cola, Kentucky Fried Hen and different merchandise. In 1988, he turned the music director for the Nation Music Affiliation’s annual tv awards present, a place he held till 2001.
Together with Mr. Putnam, Mr. Carrigan and the guitarist Terry Thompson, Mr. Briggs was inducted into the Musicians Corridor of Fame in Nashville in 2019. He remained energetic as a musician and studio proprietor effectively into his 70s.
Along with his brother, he’s survived by two sons, Darren and Gabriel, and a grandson. His marriage to Judy McLemore led to divorce.
Recalling the opening of Quadraphonic Sound in an interview for the Nationwide Affiliation of Music Retailers’ Oral Historical past Program, Mr. Briggs stated of his partnership with Mr. Putnam, “We wished a studio that was slightly higher than in every single place else we’d recorded.”
He added: “Once we began, it was going to be slightly demo studio, however then we began shopping for costlier stuff. It simply slowly, slowly grew and have become this scorching place.”
