As a young teenager Edmunds played with a band called the 99ers and in the 'Heartbeats' with his older brother Geoff. The first group that he fronted was the Cardiff based 1950s style rockabilly trio 'The Raiders', along with Bob 'Congo' Jones on drums and John Williams on bass, that worked almost exclusively in the South Wales area.

In the late 1960s, the band shifted to a more blues-rock sound and renamed as the short lived 'The Human Beans', playing mostly in London and on the British University circuit. In 1967 the band recorded a cover of "Morning Dew" on the Columbia label that failed to have any chart impact.

Soon after the remnants of Human Beans formed a new band called Love Sculpture that again reunited Edmunds, Jones and Williams as a trio, who scored a quasi-novelty hit by reworking Khachaturian's classical piece "Sabre Dance" as a speed-crazed rock number, inspired by Keith Emerson's classical rearrangements. "Sabre Dance" became a hit after garnering the enthusiastic attention of British DJ John Peel.

After Love Sculpture split, Edmunds had a UK #1 single in 1970 with "I Hear You Knocking", a Smiley Lewis cover, which he came across while producing Shakin' Stevens and the Sunsets' first album entitled 'A legend'. The recording was the first release on Edmunds' manager's MAM Records label. This single also reached #4 in the U.S., making it Edmunds' biggest hit by far on either side of the Pond.

Edmunds had intended to record Wilbert Harrison's "Let's Work Together," but when he was beaten to that song by Canned Heat, he adapted the arrangement he intended to use for it to "I Hear You Knocking", producing a highly original remake. Unfortunately, the success of the single caused EMI's Regal Zonophone Records to use an option that it had to claim Edmunds' album, 1972's Rockpile, and the momentum from the single's success on a different label went away.

Edmunds' only acting role followed, as a band member in the David Essex movie Stardust. After learning the trade of producer, culminating in a couple of singles in the style of Phil Spector, "Baby I Love You" and "Born To Be With You", he became linked with the pub rock movement of the early 1970s, producing Brinsley Schwarz, Ducks Deluxe, and also The Flamin' Groovies, using a stripped down, grittier sound.

Edmunds had bought a house in Rockfield Monmouth a few miles away from Charles and Kingsley Ward's Rockfield Studios where he became an almost permanent fixture for the next twenty years. His working regime involved arriving at the studio in the early evening and working through till well after dawn, usually locked in the building alone. Applying the layered Spector sound to his own productions it was not unusual for Edmunds to multilayer up to forty separately recorded guitar tracks into the mix.

His own solo LP from 1975, Subtle as a Flying Mallet, was similar in style. The Brinsley Schwarz connection brought about a collaboration with Nick Lowe starting with this album, and in 1976 they formed the group Rockpile, with Billy Bremner and Terry Williams. Because Edmunds and Lowe signed to different record labels that year, they could not record as Rockpile until 1980, but many of their solo LPs (such as Nick Lowe's Labour of Lust and Edmunds' own Repeat When Necessary) were in fact group recordings.

Dave Edmunds had more UK hits during this time, including Elvis Costello's "Girls Talk", Nick Lowe's "I Knew The Bride", Hank DeVito's "Queen of Hearts" (written for Edmunds but later a smash U.S. hit for Juice Newton), Graham Parker's "Crawling from the Wreckage", and Melvin Endsley's "Singing the Blues" (originally a hit for Guy Mitchell).

Unexpectedly, after Rockpile released their first LP under their own name, Seconds of Pleasure (1980), the band split, generally attributed to tensions not between Edmunds and Lowe but their respective managers. Edmunds spent the 1980s collaborating with and producing an assortment of artists, from Paul McCartney to King Kurt, and from Stray Cats to Status Quo.

He recorded the soundtrack for Porky's Revenge, supplying the main theme, "High School Nights," and was the musical director for a television special starring Carl Perkins, with assorted guests including George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and Rosanne Cash.

On his 1983 release, Information, Edmunds collaborated on two songs with Jeff Lynne, the leader of Electric Light Orchestra. One of these songs, a Jeff Lynne composition entitled "Slipping Away," became Edmunds's only other U.S. Top 40 hit, albeit just barely, spending a single week at #39. It was not a hit in the UK. In 1984, Jeff Lynne produced six tracks on Edmunds's following album, Riff Raff.

In 1986, Dave Edmunds participated in Carl Perkins' Rockabilly Session Television Special to pay tribute to his hero. Other musicians involved in the project include George Harrison, Ringo Starr, and Eric Clapton.