Towering Country Music Keys Player David Briggs Has Died

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There are only a few distinct session players in Nashville who can legitimately claim to be part of the cast of “Nashville Cats” who were in high demand for decades to perform on country albums, along with albums from across the American music spectrum. There are even fewer session players who can claim they were also part of the original Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. Piano and keyboard player, songwriter, producer, studio owner, and performer David Briggs was one of those rare unicorns.

Though he started in Florence, Alabama as a young kid reluctantly succumbing to piano lessons when he really wanted to learn the guitar, David Paul Briggs (born March 16, 1943) would go on to perform and record with some of the most important performers in American history, and on some of the most timeless recordings ever etched in vinyl.

Briggs would end up on the songs of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Jerry Reed, Linda Ronstadt, Brenda Lee, Roy Orbison, B.B. King, Dan Fogelberg, Peter, Paul & Mary, Joan Baez, Al Green, Dean Martin, Joe Simon, Tony Joe White, Joe Tex, Ronnie Milsap, Leon Russell, Joe Cocker, Bob Seger, the Pointer Sisters, and many more.

It all started even before David Briggs could drive. He would win talent contests playing boogie woogie piano, and started performing on local television in the 1950s with an act called The Crunk Brothers. It was during this time that Briggs met bassist Norbert Putnam, which would result in a long-term friendship. Putnam invited Briggs to join the rock & roll band The Rhythm Rockets. This resulted in Briggs playing on a demo session for Jimmy C. Newman in Florence and meeting Peanut Montgomery.

After the session, Peanut Montgomery invited David Briggs across the Tennessee River to Muscle Shoals and the legendary FAME studios. At this time, FAME and Muscle Shoals was barely on the recording map. But shortly after being hired in as the studio’s session keys player, all of that would change. Briggs would play on most all of the early hits emanating from the studio as it quickly became world-renown.

It was during this time that David Briggs also started writing songs, and would also start recording his own albums, mostly of instrumentals. Brenda Lee and Dan Penn would cut David Briggs songs, bringing his stature up another notch. Soon producers from Nashville were coming down to Muscle Shoals to try and capture that sweaty sound. But since the town’s accommodations were not as good as Nashville’s, eventually producers and arrangers like Felton Jarvis and Ray Stevens convinced David Briggs and other session players to move to Nashville.

Where in Muscle Shoals you could only participate in a few dozen recording sessions per year, in Nashville, the work was endless. David Briggs performed on 140 recording sessions his first year in Music City, 1965. In 1966, he would do over 400 sessions. At the height of his session work, David Briggs was doing 420 sessions a year. Despite this volume, Briggs continued to write songs, record albums under his own name, and perform live, including with the session supergroup Area Code 615.

By the late ’60s, David Briggs had partnered with Norbert Putnam to open the Quadrafonic Sound studio. It would ultimately go on to be the premier studio in Nashville for rock musicians to record at, including Neil Young, Dan Fogelberg, and Jimmy Buffett, along with hosting plenty of country sessions too.

Also with Norbert Putnam, David Briggs founded the publishing company Danor Music, ultimately discovering songwriters Troy Seals and Will Jennings. Since studio time at Quadrafonic became so high in demand, Briggs would also build the House of David studio a few blocks away, which is still in operation today.

But perhaps where David Briggs is best known publicly is his work with Elvis Presley. Briggs was first given the opportunity to record with The King in 1966 when Floyd Cramer was running late. Briggs would record and tour with Elvis off and on for the next decade, most memorably when Briggs joined Presley’s TCB band playing piano and clavinet throughout 1976.

David Briggs was one of those guys who if you erased his contributions to American music, it wouldn’t sound the same. But he did most of his work in studios, out of the spotlight, and behind-the-scenes, caring more about moving the music forward than any notoriety that might come with it. Nonetheless, he was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 1999, and the Musicians Hall of Fame as part of the original Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section in 2019.

David Briggs died on April 22, 2025 at the age of 82.

Fellow Nashville Cat Mac Gayden also recently passed away.

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