NASHVILLE, Tenn., October 21, 2009 – Legendary bassist and producer Norbert Putnam will be honored at the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum on Saturday, November 14, as part of the popular quarterly series Nashville Cats: A Celebration of Music City Musicians. The program, which will begin at 1:30 p.m. in the Museum’s Ford Theater, is included with Museum admission and free to Museum members.
Hosted by Bill Lloyd, the tribute to Putnam will include a brief performance and an in-depth, one-on-one interview highlighted by vintage recordings, photos and film clips from the Museum’s Frist Library and Archive. Immediately following the program, Putnam will sign autographs in the Museum Store.
After recording pop and R&B hits for Tommy Roe, the Tams and Arthur Alexander in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, Putnam helped create classic country and pop records in Nashville for nearly three decades. His R&B-style bass lines can be heard on classic hits such as Joan Baez’s “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” Bobby Goldsboro’s “Honey,” Dave Loggins’ “Please Come to Boston,” Elvis Presley’s “Promised Land,” Linda Ronstadt’s “Long Long Time,” and Tony Joe White’s “Polk Salad Annie,” among others. In addition, Putnam is a successful producer (Joan Baez, Jimmy Buffett, Dan Fogelberg, Kris Kristofferson), publisher (Danor Music), and business owner (Quadrafonic Sound Studios, Bennett House, Georgetown Mastering).
Norbert Putnam was raised in the Muscle Shoals area of North Alabama. In the mid 1950s, a friend urged him to join a local group covering the songs of Elvis Presley and Carl Perkins, mainly because Putnam’s father (a bluegrass musician) owned an upright bass.
At age 19, Putnam dropped out of college and joined pianist David Briggs, drummer Jerry Carrigan and singer-songwriter Dan Penn in the group Dan Penn & the Pallbearers. The nucleus of the band, along with members of the local group the Fairlanes (which contained future producers Rick Hall and Billy Sherrill), helped lay the groundwork for the “Muscle Shoals sound,” which drew international attention and made the city a recording mecca for R&B, rock and pop artists throughout the ’60s and ’70s. Putnam played on R&B and pop hits by Arthur Alexander, Jimmy Hughes, Tommy Roe and the Tams.
Putnam moved to Nashville in 1965, along with much of the Muscle Shoals crew, and quickly became one of Nashville’s most in-demand session bassists, specializing in pop, rock and R&B-oriented material. By 1970, Putnam was playing on over 600 recording sessions a year. His work can be heard on a multitude of artists’ recordings, including the Beau Brummels, J.J. Cale, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Kenny Loggins, Henry Mancini, Manhattan Transfer, the Monkees, Roy Orbison, the Pointer Sisters and more.
In 1970, Putnam and David Briggs founded their own studio (Quadrafonic Sound Studios) and publishing company (Danor Music). Kris Kristofferson approached Putnam the same year about producing Joan Baez’s Blessed Are album, a job that Kristofferson had originally committed to do. The subsequent hit single, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down,” sold over a million copies and helped Putnam become one of Nashville’s premier producers. Artists who recorded with Putman at the helm include Eric Anderson, Brewer & Shipley, Jimmy Buffett, Donovan and Dan Fogelberg.
In 1980, Putnam purchased a large Victorian home in nearby Franklin, Tennessee, and opened the Bennett House, which became another successful, in-demand recording studio. Shortly afterward, Georgetown Masters, a mastering facility Putnam founded with engineer Denny Purcell, became one of the nation’s top mastering facilities.
Putnam was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1995. In 2003, Putnam designed studios for the new Delta Music Institute at Delta State University in Cleveland, Miss., where he served as director and taught producer-engineer studies for two years. Putnam currently maintains a song publishing and production company as well as serving on the Alabama Music Hall of Fame's Board of Governors.
These programs are made possible, in part, by grants from the Metropolitan Nashville Arts Commission and by an agreement between the Tennessee Arts Commission and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Accredited by the American Association of Museums, the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum is operated by the Country Music Foundation, a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) educational organization chartered by the state of Tennessee in 1964. The Museum’s mission is the preservation of the history of country and related vernacular music rooted in southern culture. With the same educational mission, the Foundation also operates CMF Records, the Museum’s Frist Library and Archive, CMF Press, Historic RCA Studio B, and Hatch Show Print.
More information about the Country Music Hall of Fame® and Museum is available at www.countrymusichalloffame.com or by calling (615) 416-2001.
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