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, Michael Card, Ian & Sylvia and Bobby Goldsboro. Putnam published a memoir in 2017 entitled Music Lessons Vol. 1: a Musical Memoir, in which he chronicled recording sessions with Elvis Presley and other artists.

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.