Turn It Up - David Briggs Edition

Some recommendations from the late, great artist

David Briggs, both a member of the first Muscle Shoals rhythm section and a part of Nashville’s second-generation A-Team, died on April 22nd, at 82. Briggs (not to be confused with longtime Neil Young collaborator David Briggs; or Little River Band lead guitarist David Briggs; or British cathedral organist David Briggs) was a key figure behind so much of the styles and sounds that we cover here at No Fences Review and, quite likely, an important player and inspiration for music you hold dear as well. Here are just a few of the countless great tracks he played on, which travel across genres and expose the false borders between them. A member of the Musicians’ Hall of Fame, Briggs is one of the sonic architects of the 20th century. Here’s to a truly remarkable career.

Arthur Alexander — “You Better Move On” (single, 1962)

Briggs began his career in Muscle Shoals, where he became part of the house band that launched the city’s legendary music scene. Part of a group of R&B-loving white guys who gathered around Rick Hall and Billy Sherrill at the fledgling FAME Studios, Briggs and the rest found the necessary creative and commercial spark for their work when Black singer-songwriter Arthur Alexander came to the studio. Alexander brought a group of striking originals with him, which he sang with honeyed elegance in a style that bridged the pop, country, and R&B influences that inspired his compositions. None were better, or more important, than “You Better Move On,” a graceful ballad that masked its desperation beneath a stately Alexander vocal and Latin-inflected arrangement that the FAME crew developed in clear conversation with the uptown hits of Ben E. King and The Drifters. Briggs stays in the background for the most part, letting Norbert Putnam’s bass, Jerry Carrigan’s drum swoosh, and the ooh-ahh background vocalists take the lead in responding to Alexander’s pleas. But, on the bridge, the icy twinkle of his piano bursts out of the mix, becoming a deceptively playful descant over the song’s second half. It was his work with Alexander, The Tams, and others in Muscle Shoals that brought him to the attention of Nashville, especially after his Shoals colleague Billy Sherrill moved up to “Music City,” established himself as one of the city’s biggest producers, and called on his old country-soul colleagues to help him reinvent mainstream country music. – CH

Elvis Presley – “Love Letters” (single, 1966)

In 1964, the original Muscle Shoals rhythm section relocated as a group to Nashville, encouraged by producer Felton Jarvis, who’d cut some Tommy Roe sides with them in Muscle Shoals, and enticed by pay rates four times what they were making with Hall. Usually working apart from one another, Briggs, Carrigan and Putnam were all soon getting regular session work, albeit with second tier acts, and only occasionally filling in when their A-Team opposite numbers (keyboardist Floyd Cramer, drummer Buddy Harman and bassist Bob Moore) couldn’t make a date. Briggs’ first real break came when he was tagged to sub in on an Elvis session because Cramer was already booked. Presley liked to warm up in the studio singing gospel songs, so Briggs found himself chording along as Elvis sat beside him on the piano bench. Then, Elvis wanted to do the post-war standard “Love Letters,” a gorgeous, delicate ballad, “which is all piano” Briggs later recalled to Ernst Jorgenson. By the time they were ready to record, Cramer had shown up, but Elvis wanted to stick with Briggs: “Where’s that kid? I kind of got used to the way he played.” The way he played, in this case, was indebted to the R&B version by Kitty Lester, maybe a little churchier, less bluesy, and somehow both stately and airy, and sympathetic. Briggs ceded his seat back to Cramer for the remainder of the session, moving to organ for most of Presley’s Nashville Sound classic How Great Thou Art. “Love Letters,” though, was released as a stand-alone single, Presley’s last Top 20 hit for over two-and-a-half years, and Briggs found himself increasingly in demand. – DC

Conway Twitty – “The Image of Me” (from Here’s Conway Twitty, 1968)

Country soul quickly displaced what we may as well term country swing, broadly speaking, as Nashville’s standard rhythmic approach, and Conway Twitty was among the early exemplars of that approach. “The Image of Me” was the former rock-and-roller’s first Top Five hit. It established the template for Twitty’s many hits over the next decade, and though Larry Butler would be the pianist for most of those hits, it was David Briggs here at the beginning. Unlike the “all piano” “Love Letters,” Briggs’ part is small here, as the piano’s role often is on country records. But it pops: His little lick introduces Conway, plays guilty call and response with him through the first verse, and gets the nagging final word. – DC

David Briggs – “Georgia on My Mind” (from Keyboard Sculpture, 1969)

By 1969, Briggs had made enough of a name for himself that he released a solo album, with old pals Carrigan and Putnam backing him. It’s a swell set, mostly full of instrumental takes on recent hits from the Beatles, Dusty Springfield, Dionne Warwick and others, with a couple of hot Briggs’ originals, the clavinet-funky “Moon Strut” and the electric-piano driven “Itchy Fingers,” cuts that would fit right into a playlist with instrumental hits by Billy Preston or Booker T. and the MG’s. My favorite cut on the album, though, is this cover of “Georgia on My Mind,” one of Ray Charles’ early contributions to country soul and to what we now just call country. I like it primarily because it gives Briggs a chance not only to play the melody (even on Cramer’s big instrumental piano hits, he’s just playing the head over and over) but to play around with the melody a bit as he goes, and then to trade lines with himself on organ. So good. – DC

Elvis Presley – “Bridge Over Troubled Water” (from From Elvis in Nashville, 2020)

Briggs is probably best known as an Elvis side man. After that 1966 session, he and his original Muscle Shoals rhythm section mates joined Elvis in the studio for some the best music Presley ever made: That’s them on the Country Elvis and He Touched Me albums, and on the studio portions of That’s the Way It Is, just for starters. Now, I’m not one of those people who thinks sparer arrangements are inherently better, but sometimes they are better—and that’s what I think of the de-overdubbed recordings that Presley archivist Ernst Jorgenson supervised on two box sets covering the period, From Elvis in Nashville and Back in Nashville. (Full disclosure: I wrote liner notes for both collections.) They let Elvis shine, highlighting the texture and nuance of his vocal performances, and they especially highlight the band. The official “Bridge Over Troubled Water” on That’s The Way sounds enormous enough to block out the sun, but on the stripped-down mix, Briggs shines, forgoing “the fragile filigrees of the Simon & Garfunkel original,” as I wrote, “in favor of sturdy, churchy notes.” Briggs and Elvis turn the song into the most intimate altar call. – DC

Area Code 615 — “Judy” (from Trip in the Country, 1970)

It’s perhaps unsurprising that the seasoned Nashville pros who gathered as Area Code 615 possessed both the skill and desire to stretch out, beyond the constraints of whatever client they were serving at the moment. A mash-up of all they could do (which meant essentially any pop style of the period), the two Area Code 615 albums are delightful experiments, with the funky “Stone Fox Chase” the most famous highlight and Briggs’ graceful “Judy” a particular showcase for Briggs’ skills. He doubles Charlie McCoy’s harmonica on a slippery melody that recalls Ray Charles and Floyd Cramer with equal effectiveness. A needed calm in the middle of the storm, “Judy” lets everyone – musicians and listeners alike – catch their breath on the aptly-named Trip in the Country. – CH

Dolly Parton — “Coat of Many Colors” (from Coat of Many Colors, 1971)

Briggs and the original Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section were key bridge figures in country music, linking the early pop breakthroughs of the “Nashville Sound” with the R&B-soaked innovations that drove the genre in the 1970s and 1980s. But they were so good, and so in-demand, that the country classics even outside that deep stylistic well bear their individual marks and collective significance. Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors,” for example, is as tradition-rooted as it gets, with its Bible-recalling narrative of familial love and Parton’s signature (and expert) finger-picked guitar. But the arrangement unfolds across those verses into a full Nashville production, with background vocals and tasteful strings joining Parton and the core studio ensemble of Briggs and the rest. With his humming church chords, Briggs (as he so often did) settles into the arrangement without centering himself, yet another very good day at the office for one of the most important session players of the 20^th century. – CH

Elvis Presley – “Way Down” (from Moody Blue, 1977)

Eventually, Briggs became a member of Presley’s TCB band in its final years. The future Hall of Fame country producer Tony Brown played acoustic piano in that version of the group while Briggs played electric piano and, especially, clavinet. Elvis loved Briggs’ work with the “funk ax” so much (“It sounds like a big frog!”) that he turned him loose each show for a brief solo, different every night. You can check out several of those collected here, a fun nine minutes! Briggs’ best-known clavinet work with Presley, of course, was the rhythm lick driving his last big pop hit, the one on the charts when he died, “Way Down.” It sounded so… weird to me back in the day, but these days Briggs’ playing here hits me simply as itchy and irresistible. What else is new? Another fun, funky and just perfect for the song performance from David Briggs. – DC

Al Green, “The Old Rugged Cross” (from Precious Lord, 1982)

Green’s 1982 album Precious Lord is a very fine collection of gospel songs recorded in the years when he moved out of the secular spotlight and into sacred music, as well as into the pulpit of the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis, Tennessee. Unlike his other gospel albums of the period, Precious Lord was recorded in Nashville, with a band that included both David Briggs and Tony Brown on keys. To be fair, I’m not sure if the tumbling chords that open Green’s swelling take on “The Old Rugged Cross” is Briggs or Brown (or both), but the country-soul flourishes that help animate the faithful versions on Precious Lord still brilliantly recall both roots and branches of the country-soul triangle music that Briggs both drew from and redefined during his brilliant career. – CH

Pointer Sisters, “Fairytale” (from That’s A Plenty, 1974)

There’s a wonderful irony to the fact that David Briggs appears on the Pointer Sisters’ 1974 country hit “Fairytale.” He had helped popularize country-R&B crossovers in his Muscle Shoals work, then participated in their incorporation into the almost-entirely-white world of mainstream country, and now he was playing on a straight country hit by a Black group whose presence in the genre crystallized continuing tensions over its racial politics. But, beyond the meta-context, “Fairytale” is just a fantastic record, with Briggs hanging alongside the loping Kenny Buttrey beat as lead singer Anita Pointer two-steps back and forth with her sisters. Then, on the instrumental break, it’s Briggs who delivers the first solo with plunky punctuation. And at the end, as the Pointers insist they’ve “got to move on,” it’s Briggs’ piano that walks alongside them. The year before this, Briggs had played on Waylon Jennings’ justifiably celebrated Honky Tonk Heroes. But maybe the Pointer Sisters were the honky-tonk heroism that Nashville really needed. And still does. – CH

Recommended readings:

-Bill Friskics-Warren on Briggs, for The New York Times

-Robert K. Oermann on Briggs, for Music Row

If you like what you’re reading here, please think of subscribing to No Fences Review! It’s free for now, although we will be adding a paid tier with exclusive content soon. Also, if you’d like to support our work now, you can hit the blue “Pledge” button on the top-right of your screen to pledge your support now, at either monthly, yearly, or founding-member rates. You’ll be billed when we add the paid option. Thanks!