RIP: Barry Beckett -- Muscle Shoals Keyboardist

[Jazz+]

June 16, 2009

Barry Beckett, Muscle Shoals Musician, Dies at 66 By BRUCE WEBER

Barry Beckett, an Alabama-born keyboardist who helped create the distinctly Southern amalgamation of rhythm and blues, soul and country that became known as the Muscle Shoals sound, and who as a producer recorded a wide range of music with Bob Dylan, Kenny Chesney, Bob Seger, Dire Straits and others, died on Wednesday at his home in Hendersonville, Tenn., north of Nashville. He was 66.

 

The cause was complications of a stroke, his son Matthew said.

 

As a studio musician in the 1960s, Mr. Beckett played in the band affiliated with Fame Studios, the production house that turned an unlikely Southern town, Muscle Shoals, Ala., into a center of indigenous American popular music. The band, known as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and also called the Swampers, split from Fame in 1969 and, helped by the producer Jerry Wexler, created its own studio, the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, in nearby Sheffield.

 

Either with the Rhythm Section which also included the guitarist Jimmy Johnson, the bassist David Hood and the drummer Roger Hawkins or on his own, Mr. Beckett played behind a remarkable list of performers. They include Aretha Franklin, the Staple Singers, Percy Sledge, J. J. Cale, Boz Skaggs, Paul Simon he played the organ solo on Mr. Simons Kodachrome Bob Seger and Leon Russell. The Swampers were immortalized in Southern rock n roll when the band Lynyrd Skynyrd tipped hat to them in the 1974 hit Sweet Home Alabama:

 

Now, Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers

 

And theyve been known to pick a song or two

 

Lord, they get me off so much

 

They pick me up when Im feeling blue

 

Now, how about you?

 

Barry Edward Beckett was born in Birmingham, Ala., on Feb. 4, 1943. His father, Horace, was an insurance salesman who also dabbled on guitar and for a time hosted a local radio program. He attended the University of Alabama, where, according to The Times Daily of Florence, Ala., he first heard the music of two of the Swampers, Mr. Johnson and Mr. Hawkins, who were then playing in a band called the Del-Rays. He was working with a blues producer in Pensacola, Fla., when he was asked to join the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section.

 

In the 1970s Mr. Beckett began producing as well as playing. Among many other projects, he produced or co-produced the hit singles Torn Between Two Lovers (1976) by Mary MacGregor, Smoke From a Distant Fire (1977) by the Sanford-Townsend Band and Mr. Segers Weve Got Tonite (1978), as well as, with Mr. Wexler, Bob Dylans albums Slow Train Coming (1979), on which he also played keyboards, and Saved (1980).

 

In the mid-1980s Mr. Beckett moved to Nashville, where he worked for a time producing records for Warner Brothers, including Hank Williams Jr.s album Born to Boogie, which reached the top of the Billboard country chart in 1987. He later became an independent producer, working with rock groups like Phish, and country artists like Kenny Chesney and Alabama.

 

In addition to his son Matthew, who lives in Nashville, Mr. Beckett is survived by his wife of 43 years, Diane, whom he met when he was playing at a club in Pensacola and she was in the audience; another son, Mark, of Hendersonville, a drummer who plays on Mr. Chesneys current hit, Out Last Night; and a grandson.

 

Theres no way I would be where I am today in my life if it wasnt for Barry Beckett, Mr. Chesney, perhaps country musics top male star and whose first two albums were produced by Mr. Beckett, told the newspaper The Tennessean in an interview last week. He was one of the first people in Nashville to believe in me, on any level.

 

[Joe Muscara]

Barry Beckett thread

[B3bluesman59]

I had the good fortune to spend some time in the early 80's with "The Swampers" at their studio in Muscle Shoals. What a great bunch of guys....and what a great bunch of players. They never took themselves too seriously even though they played and made the sounds that took some of our biggest artists to the top of the charts. They just felt they were good old boys who loved living in Muscle Shoals...and as Jimmy Johnson said to me "We figured if we were good enough players artists would come to us, even all the way to Muscle Shoals. And besides, a dollar goes a lot further in Muscle Shoals than it does in LA or New York". In those days Muscle Shoals was "dry" and many acts looked at that as an extra bonus as many of those artists had problems with liquor...and the nearest liquor store was in Huntsville which was about 50 miles away. Of course they probably could have found a bottle of White Lightning somewhere...probably in the engineers office as the story goes that the MSS engineers used Everclear to clean the tape heads in the studio.

[Steve Nathan]

In those days Muscle Shoals was "dry"...and the nearest liquor store was in Huntsville

 

If you look at albums cut in those days, nearly every one has among the musician/producer/engineer credits a mysterious unexplained credit for whoever was the "bootlegger" for the sessions. This was not someone bringing moonshine from a backwoods still, but a "businessman" who smuggled liquor into the county from outside and sold it by the bottle or the case to established customers.

I moved to Muscle Shoals from New York, and had never even heard of "dry" counties. My 2nd or 3rd week there I decided to cook breakfast for some of my new friends. I had an old family recipe for pancakes that uses a little booze for flavor. I was floored when told there were no liquor stores. I literally had to "meet a guy behind K-mart" to buy my secret ingredient out of the trunk of his car.

[B3bluesman59]

I was floored when told there were no liquor stores.

________________________________________________________________

The last time I was in Muscle Shoals in the early 80s liquor sales had become legal so we went to the new store in town. The owner had the bottles set up on sawhorses with 2x4 planks laid across them. Very primitive, much cheaper than fancy shelves, and it worked. We bought a bottle of Everclear and took it back to the studios where the engineers warned us not to drink the Everclear around any type of open flames such as a lighter and/or cigarette. That is when he told me he used Everclear "to clean the tape heads". I never knew for sure if he was kidding or not....but it makes me laugh to this day. Jimmy Johnson told me a story about the first studio they had. It was an old casket company about 100 feet long and 10 feet wide. He said it was an odd shaped building but had a great vibe. Jimmy said they would do a take then head for the front porch for a beer. They would crank up the music inside and listen out there on the porch. In Jimmy's words "If it sounded good out there on the porch we knew we had one!" I loved that place!!!

[b3keys]

Strange that the above tribute makes no mention of Traffic.

[Steve Nathan]

I did my first Muscle Shoals sessions in that old casket factory studio on Jackson Highway. Pete Carr's "Not a Word On It". It was exactly as described. Long and narrow with instruments crammed along both walls and barely a pathway through to the control room.

 

Strange that the above tribute makes no mention of Traffic.

 

A full telling of Barry's work would fill so many pages, it would be hard to include even half of his resume in a single obit. To be honest, I don't think Barry's time with Traffic was all that significant in comparison to the whole of his career. Roger and David were a much bigger part of that than Barry.