Norbert Putnam

Norbert Auvin Putnam (born August 10, 1942) is an American musician, studio owner and record producer who was inducted into the Musicians Hall of Fame in 2019. He got his start as a bass player in the studio house band in Muscle Shoals, Alabama and from there was recruited to move to Nashville in 1965. He became a successful session player on recordings by artists including Roy Orbison, Al Hirt, Henry Mancini, Dan Fogelberg, Linda Ronstadt, J. J. Cale, Tony Joe White, the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, the Byrds, Michael Card, Ian & Sylvia and Bobby Goldsboro.

He became involved with music publishing in his mid-career and in 1971 built Quadraphonic Studios, a popular Nashville recording studio known as simply "Quad" by locals. Quadraphonic's success was in part because of Putnam's interest and experimentation in the technological details of sound recording. He retired from actively playing sessions in the early 1970s to be a producer. In this role, he is credited with broadening Nashville as a recording center by bringing in non-country acts such as Jimmy Buffett, Joan Baez and Dan Fogelberg.

Early life

Putnam's father played in a family band as a young man and when son Norbert was growing up, an upright bass was in the household. In his mid-teens, Putnam played bass in a band in Florence with other teenagers David Briggs and Jerry Carrigan. The boys were too young to drive then and Carrigan's father drove them to engagements. The success of these recordings drew the attention of the entire recording industry to the previously unknown and out-of-the way studio. Putnam, Carrigan and Briggs were subsequently recruited by prominent music producers to move to Nashville, about 125 miles north. The three musicians left Muscle Shoals simultaneously to pursue separate careers in Nashville . Their replacements in Muscle Shoals became the second generation of the "Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section" nicknamed "The Swampers".

On the Elvis recording of "Merry Christmas Baby", Putnam is referenced by Elvis, when he calls "Wake up Putt".