Your roots run back to your teenage days as one of Muscle Shoals most famous bass players. How old were you when you first stepped foot inside a real recording studio?
I never planned to be a record producer. I never planned to be a musician. I grew up in Florence, Alabama, and when I was 15 the kids in my school were putting a band together to play early Elvis [Presley]. We're talking the era of Bill Black, Scotty Moore, and DJ Fontana. One of them remembered my father had an acoustic bass. No one else in school did, so I was approached by this kid, Danny Cross, to play with the band, and I said, "Danny, what makes you think I can become proficient enough to play in your band overnight?" He said, "Norbert, this Elvis music only has three chords." That was the beginning of my journey. Tom Stafford had started a music publishing company [SPAR: Stafford Publishing and Recording], and his office was right above the city drug store where his father was a pharmacist. He was also the manager of the Princess Theater. He said if we'd come play on demos, he'd get us into all the movies free. At 16, after school, we'd run up to Tom's place and he'd be preaching to us, "Right here in Florence, Alabama, we can write hit songs and hit records, and be in the music industry." Tom was this older guy, 26 or 27, and he wore his blue blazer, gray trousers, and school tie every day; and he'd sign anyone who could make a rhyme. We were writing original parts for original songs. David Briggs [keyboards], Jerry Carrigan [drums], and myself were coming up and demoing songs for Tom Stafford after school. That's when I was between 16 and 18 years old.
You three became the famed Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section. Is it true you three actually got to open for The Beatles while still in high school?
We had been written up in print as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, because we were the only rhythm section in Muscle Shoals that made records between 1961 and 1965. In 1964, The Beatles were coming to America for the first time, and they asked if we would be the backup band for the opening acts. That was, of course, February 11th, 1964. In those days most acts didn't travel with a band because it was too expensive, so they would show up with their charts. We got to open for The Righteous Brothers. The Righteous Brothers and Tommy Roe were on the bill, and when The Beatles came out, they were the first loud rock 'n' roll act I'd ever heard!
You arrived in Nashville a year later and quickly made a name as one of Nashville's most in-demand session players. What was the secret to your success in that first stage of your studio career?
Nashville musicians were chameleon-like; they could hear the voice and type of song and morph into that kind of backing musician. I had to be able to play seven or eight different styles of bass. If you could play all the styles, write your part out, and listen to the singer, and play with much emotion as possible, you could be a Nashville studio guy. It took me about three years to get into the top four or five [session bassists] in Nashville. The first year I did 100 record dates, and the second year I did about 250. By the third year, I'd played on some hits and had established a style of playing that was different from anyone else. By 1970, I was playing 600 record dates a year! It was me, Bobby Moore, Junior Huskey [Roy Huskey Jr.], and Henry Strzelecki on bass. On a lot of dates, it could be any one of four or five drummers, four or five keyboard guys, and any one of a dozen guitar players – because most sessions had two guitars. The culture of the Nashville session players, at that time, was that they were focused. If you had a 10 to 1 session in the morning, everyone was there at 10, ready to hear the first song. Us Muscle Shoals guys would wander in around 10 o'clock, get some coffee, talk about what we did on the weekend, and maybe by 10:30 everybody comes in and they play the first song down. In Muscle Shoals we'd play it for an hour before we memorized it; but this was the culture of professionalism, we fell into it once we got to Nashville. Thank god we did, because by 1970 a good studio guy could make $100,000 a year. I would drive my station wagon in every morning, and I might be at RCA Studio B from 10 to 1 in the afternoon, Studio A from 2 to 5, Columbia from 6 to 9, and, a couple nights a week, I might have a 10 to 1 a.m. session, and get home at 2 in the morning. That's at 23, 24 years old.
How did your years as a session player help prepare you to transition into the role of record producer?
Every day was an education. When I got to Nashville, I got to work with some really incredible record producers, and it was a great education. I worked for some really great producers, but the best part of it is that I also worked for some really horrible producers, and the horrible producers taught me what not to do. The only time the Nashville session guys ever had any problem with a producer is when he'd come out and try to tell them all what to play. The thing he would tell you to play would be some commonplace part that shut off any creative thought you might have for this guy. That was probably my first lesson in producing.
You had the rare opportunity of recording over 100 songs with Elvis in the studio.
I did 122 tracks for Elvis over a seven year period. I started with him in June of 1970, and – get this – I was just retiring as a bass player. I played five years in Nashville, and I think the last year I played I did 625 record dates. I was so exhausted; I was 28 years old and my back hurt because half the dates I played were on the upright acoustic bass! Felton Jarvis had been producing Elvis Presley for two or three years, and Bobby Moore had played on all of Elvis's records when he came back from the service. In 1969, Felton brought in some of the Muscle Shoals guys that had been up here. I did it because I wanted to see what Elvis was all about. He was on my bucket list, and I only had two or three guys on that list. Another one of them was Ray Charles, and I'd done a television show in Nashville with Ray. I got to spend the whole afternoon with him, and we did a whole bunch of his classics. The first week, June of 1970, we did five nights with James Burton and Chip Young [Tape Op #124] on guitars, me, David Briggs, Jerry Carrigan, and Charlie McCoy, because he could play everything in the band. We did 35 or 36 tracks that first session! He [Elvis] came in with a big smile on his face, and had his arms open like, "Come over here," like a football huddle. He gathered everybody around, and he said, "Guys, let's sit down and talk for a minute before we go to work." We wound up spending that first night sitting on the tile floor at RCA Studio B with Elvis, and for two hours he regaled us with the funniest Elvis stories you've ever heard. He had us laughing. Over that two hours we forgot this was the biggest artist in the history of the world. Then we knocked out three tracks in three hours, and there was no pressure. He would nail his vocal on the first take. He didn't need to work up to it. I could see him getting ready to do the vocal. He'd take a deep breath before that first take, and he'd say, "Guys, we're gonna get this on the first take," and he would attack that song right off the bat. Most of the artists I worked with worked up to it, so they would sing it two or three times, and then would feel like they were about to get it. We started at 10 o'clock, Elvis would go from 10 to 3 or 4 a.m., and by 4 we were all dragging. Most of us would work a morning and afternoon session before we got to Elvis at 6. He was the greatest recording artist I've ever worked with.
What inspired you and co-founder David Briggs to go against the grain and take a gamble on building a studio in a house?
