As a member of the Muscle Shoals rhythm section, Barry Beckett played on innumerable classic records by everyone from Aretha Franklin and the Staple Singers to Bob Dylan, Paul Simon and Dire Straits. Musicians from across the spectrum of soul, pop and rock queued up to record with the team of crack session musicians known as “the Swampers”. Beckett played keyboards alongside guitarist Jimmy Johnson, bassist David Hood and drummer Roger Hawkins.

Their sound was rooted in funky, down-home Southern R&B but they were hugely versatile and capable of playing in any style, incorporating blues, soul and country influences. Among other regular session bands, probably only the Funk Brothers at the Motown studios in Detroit and Booker T and the MGs, who ruled the roost at Stax Records in Memphis, played on more hits than Beckett and the Muscle Shoals crew.

Beckett was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1943 and attended the University of Alabama, where he got to know the Del-Rays, a band that included Johnson and Hawkins. His first job in music was playing piano in a dance school. By 1967 he was in Pensacola, Florida, working with the blues producer “Papa” Don Schroeder, when he got the call to join Johnson, Hawkins and David Hood in the session band employed at Rick Hall’s FAME Studios in Alabama, replacing the keyboardist Spooner Oldham, who had moved north to Memphis.

The combination of virtuosity and “feel” for which the musicians employed at FAME were noted had already attracted the likes of soul stars Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin and Otis Redding, even though the session band — dubbed the Swampers by Leon Russell — were all Caucasian. With Beckett on board, FAME went from strength to strength and by 1969 the Swampers’ reputation was great enough for them to leave Hall and collectively found their own rival Muscle Shoals Sound Studio.

Established in their own studio, the Swampers became busier than ever. Among the biggest hits that Beckett played on during this period were the Staple Singers’ I’ll Take You There (1972), Mel and Tim’s Starting All Over Again (1972) and Paul Simon’s Kodachrome (1973), but his keyboards also graced records by black artists such as Johnnie Taylor and Bobby Bland as well as white rock stars such as Rod Stewart, the Rolling Stones, Joe Cocker and J. J. Cale. The band’s renown was such that Lynyrd Skynyrd even name-checked them in their 1974 hit Sweet Home Alabama: “Now Muscle Shoals has got the Swampers; / And they’ve been known to pick a song or two. / Lord they get me off so much. / They pick me up when I’m feeling blue.”

In 1979 a born-again Bob Dylan arrived at Muscle Shoals to record Slow Train Coming. Beckett played piano and organ on almost every track and also co-produced the record with the Atlantic records veteran Jerry Wexler. The album, with its strongly Christian imagery, was highly controversial and infuriated many of Dylan’s traditional fans. But it was his first album to go platinum and whatever misgivings many had about the message, all were agreed that it was one of the best-sounding records that Dylan had ever made, due in large part to Beckett and Wexler’s clean and crisp production.

Slow Train Coming was so successful that a year later Beckett was back in the studio with Dylan co-producing the follow-up disc, Saved, which appeared in 1980. Beckett and Wexler also co-produced Communique the second album by the British rock band Dire Straits, whose guitarist Mark Knopfler had played on the Slow Train Coming sessions.

Beckett left Muscle Shoals in 1985 and moved to Nashville, where he took a job as head of A&R for Warner Brothers Records. After leaving Nashville he became an independent producer, taking charge of mostly country hits by Kenny Chesney and Alabama.

Beckett was given a diagnosis of prostate and thyroid cancer and suffered several strokes. He is survived by his wife, Diane, and their two sons.

Barry Beckett, musician and record producer, was born on February 4, 1943. He died on June 10, 2009, aged 66