Career
He is best known for his work with David Hood, Jimmy Johnson, and Roger Hawkins, his bandmates in the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, which performed with numerous notable artists on their studio albums and helped define the "Muscle Shoals Sound". Among the artists Beckett recorded with were Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, Rod Stewart, Duane Allman, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. In addition, the studio produced such chart-making hits as "Torn Between Two Lovers" by Mary MacGregor and the Sanford-Townsend Band"s "Smoke from a Distant Fire".
In 1973 Beckett took to the road in the expanded lineup of Traffic.
Recordings from this tour were released on the band"s live album On The Road. Beckett was co-producing with Jerry Wexler when, in 1979, Bob Dylan called on Wexler to produce the Slow Train Coming sessions.
Beckett not only co-produced the album but played piano and organ throughout. (He did not go on the road as a gospel tours musician behind Dylan, but he was back in the studio with him in February 1980 to co-produce, again with Wexler, the album Saved, on which he was replaced on keyboards by Spooner Oldham and Terry Young after the session of February 12, 1980 and so plays only on the album’s title track, ‘Solid Rock’, ‘What Can I Do Foreign You?’ and ‘Satisfied Mind’.
On the album liner notes Beckett is billed as co-producer and as ‘special guest artist’.
Beckett moved to Nashville in 1982 to become A & R country music director for Warner Brothers Records and co-produced Williams, Junior."s records with Jim Editor Norman. Beckett produced records independently after leaving Warner Brothers
Records.
Beckett also played on Paul Simon"s Still Crazy After All These Years, which reached #1 on the People’s Billboard 200. Beckett died of natural causes at his home in Hendersonville, Tennessee in 2009, aged 66.