Bobby Ogdin

Robert Ford Ogdin (born September, 1945) is a Nashville-based recording session pianist.

He is best known as a member of Elvis Presley's TCB band.

He performed on 20 of Presley's recordings and accompanied him on 45 live shows until Presley's death in 1977.

Ogdin's piano playing was synchronized with archival footage of Presley's vocal performance on "Unchained Melody" in the 2022 motion picture, Elvis directed by Baz Luhrman.

Ogdin's experiences during the Presley tours have been chronicled in a four-part series of video interviews by Billy Stallings.

Over a career spanning four decades as a session musician, Ogdin recorded with country artists including Kenny Rogers, Willie Nelson, George Jones, The Judds, Kenny Chesney, Ray Charles, and Ronnie Milsap.

In early 1977, a vacancy opened in Elvis Presley's TCB Band when David Briggs resigned.

Ogdin was chosen as his replacement primarily by Briggs and by Elvis' record producer Felton Jarvis, seconded by Bob Beckham.

When Ogdin accepted, Jarvis told him there were no charts and no rehearsals.

He was given a cassette tape of the show to memorize.

There were no sound checks for him to attend; the instruments were transported, positioned and tuned by roadies and sound levels and monitors were done by a crew supervised by veteran sound engineer Bill Porter.

Ogdin's debut performance in what would become a series of 45 shows was on March 23, 1977, at Arizona State University in Tempe.

He had written himself cue cards to refer to on stage.

After the warm-up acts finished, TCB Band members along with the Joe Guercio Orchestra from Las Vegas took their places and began the overture with a dramatic build-up as Elvis appeared and pandemonium followed.

Ogdin said, "I was the most excited one in the place".

He saw Presley for the first time only then, and Ogdin was seated at the front of the stage fairly close to him.

Elvis walked over to Ogdin and shook his hand during the initial crowd reaction, acknowledging Elvis' awareness and collegiality toward the new member.

Three powerful spotlights on Elvis blinded Ogdin and his cue cards were of no use.

Elvis' isolation from the other musicians during those days was near complete, to the extent that no band member had any contact with him except during the actual performances.

His schedule was opposite from theirs.

When the performance was over, he was immediately taken to his own plane and flown to the next city to spend the night and usually slept until the next afternoon.

The band stayed in town after the show and left the next morning.

Ogdin said, "We stayed in the best hotels and everything was taken care of for us."

Wardrobe was provided (seven different pastel outfits) and there was a per diem allowance for food and expenses, so backstage catering was fairly basic.

In each city, the people there knew this was a big event, and each hotel where the musicians stayed was full of excitement.

Ogdin was amused when people asked for his autograph and brought food and gifts for the band.

He said, "You accepted but never ate the food, and the gifts (usually teddy bears) were collected and donated."

In rock music, he was a member of the Marshall Tucker Band for five years (1984–1989) after departures of some of the original members.

He also recorded and performed concerts with the alternative rock band Ween.

Born in Detroit, Ogdin grew up in Knoxville, Tennessee.

As a youth, he studied piano and violin from age 4 to 16 and won a Knoxville Symphony Orchestra music-writing contest.

His father was an executive at Robertshaw Controls Company; his sister, Sue Ogdin Lynch, is a visual artist.

As a teen, he became interested in rock and roll music and played piano and a Hammond B3 organ in local bands.

He graduated from the University of Tennessee and attended law school briefly, but realized it was not his calling.

He served in the army for two years.

Tom Collins, a Nashville record producer whom Ogdin had known as a Sigma Chi Fraternity brother in college, urged him to come to Nashville to explore music opportunities.

Collins arranged for him to get some work playing on jingles and demo recordings.

He worked his way up to become an in-demand studio musician for scores of major artists including Elvis Presley, Willie Nelson, Kenny Rogers, The Judds, Travis Tritt, George Jones, Kenny Chesney, Ray Charles, Barbara Mandrell, Dan Hill, Amy Grant and Ronnie Milsap.

In 2018, Ogdin was interviewed by Billy Stallings in a four-part video series chronicling Ogdin's experiences on tour with Presley.

These first-hand accounts are the source for some of the following information.