The Fame Recordings
Studio album by Dan Penn
Released 2013
Recorded 1964-1966
Genre Soul
Length 1:02:53
Label Ace
Compiled Alec Palao, Dan Penn
The Fame Recordings is a compilation of studio demos performed by Dan Penn from 1964-1966 at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama (plus one song that was released on a 45rpm single).
Dan Penn (born Wallace Daniel Pennington, 16 November 1941) is an American singer, musician, songwriter, and record producer who co-wrote many soul hits of the 1960s including "The Dark End Of The Street" and "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" with Chips Moman as well as "Cry Like a Baby" with Spooner Oldham. Penn also produced many hits including "The Letter" by The Box Tops. Though considered to be one of the great white soul singers of his generation, Penn has released relatively few records featuring his own vocals and musicianship preferring the relative anonymity of songwriting and producing.
Early life and career
Penn grew up in Vernon, Alabama, and spent much of his teens and early twenties in the Quad Cities/Muscle Shoals area. He was a regular at Rick Hall's FAME Studios as a performer, songwriter, and producer. It was during his time with FAME that Penn cut his first record, "Crazy Over You" in 1960, and wrote his first hit, "Is a Bluebird Blue?" which was recorded by Conway Twitty in the same year. The success of the #6 pop hit "I'm Your Puppet" by James & Bobby Purify in 1966 convinced him that songwriting was a lucratively worthwhile career choice.
Career moves
In early 1966, Penn moved to Memphis, began writing for Press Publishing Company, and worked with Chips Moman at his American Studios. Their intense and short-lived partnership produced some of the best known and most enduring songs of the genre. Their first collaboration, the enduring classic "The Dark End of the Street", was first a hit for James Carr and has since been recorded by many others. A few months later, during the legendary recording sessions that saw Jerry Wexler introduce Aretha Franklin to FAME Studios and her first major success, the pair wrote "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" in the studio for her, which went to #37 in Billboard in 1967. In early 1967 Penn produced "The Letter" for The Box Tops. He and long-time friend and collaborator Spooner Oldham also wrote a number of hits for the band, including "Cry Like a Baby", another song which has been covered many times.
Other songs written or co-written by Penn include:
"I'm Your Puppet"
"A Woman Left Lonely", originally recorded by Janis Joplin
"You Left the Water Running" a #42 R&B hit for Barbara Lynn in 1966, also recorded by Otis Redding and released posthumously in 1976.
"Sweet Inspiration" a #5 hit for the Sweet Inspirations in 1968
"I Hate You" recorded by Bobby Blue Bland and Jerry Lee Lewis
"Handy" and "Everyday Livin' Days" recorded by Merrilee Rush
"Got a Feelin' For Ya" recorded by Kelly Willis
"I'm Not Through Loving You Yet" record by Neil Young's wife Pegi on her solo album
"Like A Road Leading Home" recorded by Albert King and Jerry Garcia
"Nobody's Fool" recorded by Alex Chilton
"Time I Took A Holiday" recorded by Nick Lowe
"Where You Gettin' It" recorded by Theryl DeClouet
"Out of Left Field" recorded by Percy Sledge and Hank Williams, Jr. and
"Slippin' Around" recorded by Clarence Carter and the Detroit Cobras
Penn continued writing and producing hits for numerous artists during the 1960s and finally released a record of his own, the 1972 single entitled "Nobody's Fool". He was coaxed into the studio again in 1993 to record the acclaimed "Do Right Man" which saw him reunited with many of his friends and colleagues from Memphis & Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. He also has recently written and produced for the Hacienda Brothers.
He now lives in Nashville, and continues to write with Oldham and other contemporaries such as Donnie Fritts, Gary Nicholson and Norbert Putnam. He and Carson Whitsett have had their collaborations recorded by Irma Thomas and Johnny Adams and often teamed with writers Jonnie Barmett and later, Hoy Lindsey. The Penn/Whitsett/Lindsey team are responsible for the title track of Solomon Burke's album Don't Give Up on Me (also recorded by Joe Cocker), and Penn produced 2005's Better to Have It by Bobby Purify that featured twelve songs from the team. He and Oldham also tour together as their schedules permit.
In November 2012 the collection The Fame Recordings was released. It included 24 numbers (23 unreleased) Penn had recorded at the FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama between 1964 and 1966. In the fall of 2013 he will be inducted in the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.
Professional Ratings:
allmusic 4.5/5 stars
The Guardian 4/5 stars
Review by Mark Deming of allmusic:
In the first few pages of Peter Guralnick's superb book Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm & Blues and the Southern Dream of Freedom, the author describes Dan Penn as "the renegade white hero of this book," and Penn has been widely and justly celebrated by many music historians as one of the great songwriters to emerge from the 1960s soul music boom, penning classic tunes for Aretha Franklin, Percy Sledge, James Carr, Otis Redding, James & Bobby Purify, and many more. Penn is less widely acclaimed as a great soul singer, largely because so few people have heard his work; while Guralnick and other writers have spoken rhapsodically of the publishing demos Penn cut in the '60s, Penn put out only four obscure singles prior to making his misbegotten debut album in 1973, and his body of recorded work remains elusive. Thankfully, Ace Records has finally made it possible for fans to hear the recordings that so impressed Guralnick; The Fame Recordings includes 24 numbers Penn recorded at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama between 1964 and 1966, all but one of which has never before been released. While a few of these songs would be major hits for other artists, nearly all of them sound like winners, and unlike most songwriters demo-ing their material, Penn's performances are raw, passionate, full-bodied, and soulful; he was a white kid from the deep south in love with the sound of Ray Charles and Bobby "Blue" Bland, and on the best cuts here, he goes past conjuring an approximation of their sound, revealing a voice and style all his own that suggests he influenced the singers who would cut these songs almost as much as they influenced him. While Penn could mimic other artists -- "I'm Living Good" is an uncanny Sam Cooke lift, and "Take a Good Look" finds Penn channeling Otis Redding -- he puts in enough force and sheer belief to make these performances his own no matter how well you may already know these songs, and with a number of legendary session men backing him up, these recordings are remarkably accomplished, slightly rough but full of the sound of musicians thrilled by the act of creation. (And one can hear more than a bit of what Penn taught Alex Chilton when he produced the Box Tops' original string of hits, transforming Chilton's British Invasion instincts into some of the most soulful pop of the '60s.) The Fame Recordings is a valuable lost chapter in the history of Southern Soul, and confirms the legend that Dan Penn's publishing demos were more than just talk -- anyone with a taste for vintage R&B owes it to himself to give this a listen.
Album notes by Alec Palao:
Dan Penn is recognised as one of the great songsmiths of the past 50 years. Music historian Peter Guralnick once described him as the "secret hero" of 60s R&B. For many, Penn's material defines the essence of southern soul writing, but his catalogue also retains the ability to transcend musical barriers; classics such as 'I'm Your Puppet' and 'Do Right Woman' have scaled the pop and country charts in equal measure. With his principal collaborator Spooner Oldham, Penn lent R&B songwriting a class and eloquence that has rarely been bettered.
This much-anticipated collection, however, reveals the flowering of Dan Penn as an artist in his own right. It's collated from the hard evidence of three amazing and educational years spent at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals as a staff writer Ð an apprenticeship that was as important in helping him find a voice as it was in forging the songcraft that made his name. Studio honcho Rick Hall issued a quartet of singles on Penn during the time the singer was in his employ but, while decent, these did not play to the strengths he displayed in the multitude of relaxed late-night sessions undertaken in this remarkably prolific period. The best moments are brought together on "The Fame Recordings". With the enviable ambiance of the golden era FAME studio throughout, the combined performances approximate a great lost 60s soul album.
Penn was the real deal, an R&B-obsessed white teenager from rural Alabama who readily identified with the raw emotion of the black musical experience. Over several years of raucous fraternity gigs with the Nomads, Mark V and Pallbearers, Penn had sandblasted his vocal cords into an approximation of idols Ray Charles and Bobby Bland. He continued the treatment at FAME with a strict regimen of Kools and Marlboros, but the raspy, frosty cigarette touch in itself did not guarantee authenticity. Rather, it added a remarkable melisma to Penn's developing technique, which perfectly matched the earnestness of delivery and performance. Soulful expression was easily and undeniably within his grasp.
For connoisseurs of southern soul, the finely tuned tracklisting will be a revelation, in that several future standards of the genre are presented in their original incarnation Ð often cut just hours after each song's composition. 'Uptight Good Woman', 'It Tears Me Up' and 'Feed The Flame', along with tunes recorded by Fame stablemates such as Jimmy Hughes and James Barnett, all bear the agreeable glow of a familiar arrangement combined with an exciting, alternative interpretation. On the other hand, Penn's templates for 'Rainbow Road' and 'You Left The Water Running' are considerably different from better-known versions by other artists. The personal brand of soul he delivers on cuts such 'Long Ago' and 'Don't Lose Your Good Thing' is irresistible.
Most tracks date from 1964 and 1965 and all feature one or other of the renowned session crews Rick Hall employed at FAME during that time. Oldham, Hall and their associates Marlin Greene, Junior Lowe and Donnie Fritts all wax lyrical in the liner notes about Penn's artistry and the man himself provides a lengthy and revelatory reminiscence of a signal time in his life and career. "The Fame Recordings" offers a fascinating peek at the emergence of a popular music great.
Review by Joe McEwen on Peter Guralnick's website:
For years there was quite a mythology surrounding the name Dan Penn. A Southern soul songwriter whose name appeared on some off the most heartfelt, literate '60s soul music stories (sung by voices like Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Percy Sledge, James Carr and Arthur Conley), Dan Penn was also something of a singer, whose impossible-to-find random singles and never-heard demos were rumored to be at least the equal of the Murderers Row that made them famous. Much of the Dan Penn myth-making was fueled by the enthusiasm of Atlantic Records entrepreneur and A+R guy Jerry Wexler. In fact it was Wexler's Atlantic label that released more than a few of Penn's best compositions.
There's no doubt Dan Penn was a mysterious presence, more heard about than heard. A white man who succeeded in a black man's world. Not unlike LSU basketball genius Pete Maravich (whose college career timeline paralleled Penn's years here), Dan Penn was a larger-than-life ghost, with little national exposure.
A few years back, CBS Sports aired a documentary about Maravich. Watching it was really something. Pete Maravich was certainly more than advertised, a basketball-playing magician and soloist whose talent stood outside time and place. To my mind, it's not a stretch comparing the Maravich footage to the 23 publishing demos (there's one actual Fame single) on Dan Penn: The Fame Recordings.
In the early part of the 1960s, Dan Penn led a band, Dan Penn and the Pallbearers, that played the college fraternity circuit throughout Mississippi and Alabama. Despite local success, Penn found his calling in songwriting. The liner notes to this project are mostly a conversation with Dan, a self-revelatory monologue about the craft of writing songs.
Dan Penn took this work with studied seriousness. His writing influences ran a gamut of radio hit styles: Phil Spector, Motown (Marvin Gaye), Sam Cooke and Joe Tex.
As a singer, Penn's vocals are styled and impassioned, equal parts Elvis Presley, Charlie Rich and Bobby Bland. He was a mimic when he needed to be, anything to sell the song. His more-than-occasional mid-song soliloquies (particularly "Uptight Good Woman" and "It Tears Me Up") are spot-on Tex.
Dan Penn was an original, an eloquent songwriter with a voice to match. He helped popularize a style that has become known as country-soul and Penn landed right in the middle of those two worlds. Backed by producer and label owner Rick Hall's home-grown house band (an ensemble embarking on their own spectacular career), Penn created a kind of soul music that was high-level pop art.Wallace Daniel Pennington aka Dan Penn, to use a Maravich-inspired basketball metaphor, could throw a blind behind-the-back bounce pass on the run. The thrill is in these songs and performances. Once in a while the myth really does become the man. Such is the case with Dan Penn.
Review by Nate Knaebel on Dusted:
Referred to by Peter Guralnick in his indispensable tome Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm and Blues and the Southern Search for Freedom as "the secret hero of this book," Dan Penn is southern soul music's most venerable behind-the-scenes figure. As a writer or co-writer, he is responsible for some of the genre's most canonical songs, "I'm Your Puppet," "Dark End of the Street" and "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" among them. He was with Alex Chilton during the singer's first attempt to navigate the treacherous straits of fame, producing Box Tops classics such as "The Letter," "Soul Deep" and "Cry Like a Baby," the latter of which he co-wrote with Spooner Oldham. As part of the staff at Memphis's American Studios in the late 1960s and early '70s, Penn helped lay the groundwork for Elvis's last gasp of artistic and creative relevance (think "Suspicious Minds"); and in 1972, Penn would offer his own eccentric take on that sound via the slightly odd yet intriguing solo album Nobody's Fool. In and out of print since its release (and currently out), the album fetches hefty sums on both CD and LP among collectors. It was, however, at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, that Penn first cut his teeth and flexed his muscles, as an in-house musical jack of all trades for the legendary studio owner and producer Rick Hall, one of the key architects of the southern soul sound.
While under the tutelage of Hall, the R&B fanatic Penn would ultimately realize his true calling as a writer and studio man well outside of the spotlight, but his time there also harnessed, if only briefly, the seasoned road dog's stunning prowess as a vocalist. Nuanced, controlled, but steeped in the gritty fervor of the church and the sophisticated blues of the likes of Ray Charles and Bobby "Blue" Bland, Penn had a voice that prompted Ahmet Ertegun to call him "by far the most soulful Caucasian singer I have [ever] heard." Nearly impossible to track down until now, Penn's recordings at Fame provide a rare opportunity to hear a songwriter interpret and tinker with his own raw talent with the freedom and encouragement to do so.
The cream collected here on The Fame Recordings, by the British label Ace, fills a key gap in Penn's career, collecting 20-plus long-sought-after sides from the era. Largely co-written with partner Spooner Oldham, the songs track Penn's growth as both a composer and a performer. And while it showcases an undeniably original talent, the sound isn't without precedent, either. In addition to the aforementioned Charles and Bland, Charlie Rich's amalgam of pop, country and R&B comes to mind. And one can hear the mellifluousness of Sam Cooke creep in on occasion to smooth the pack-a-day edges of Penn's delivery. Some songs, like the "My Girl" knock-off "Power of Love," were obvious attempts to generate a hit. But even at this relatively early, formative stage in his career, Penn was capable of utter genius. His version of "Rainbow Road," while given a pop arrangement that removes it some distance from the heartbreaking plea that Arthur Alexander would record a little less than a decade later, is a testament to Penn's depth and adroitness as an artist at the tender age of 23. Elsewhere, as on the strutters "Keep on Talking" and "You Left the Water Running" (later made famous by Otis Redding) or the slow-burners "Feed the Flame" and "Uptight Good Woman," Penn displays such talent and confidence, it's hard to understand how he wasn't a bona fide star, or at least marketed as one.
It's worth noting that while Penn is the clear focus of this release, the Fame Recordings are also, as the title suggests, very much about the place in which they were recorded. Rick Hall's legendary studio was a hit factory. Over the years, his team would construct such colossal numbers as "You Better Move On" by Arthur Alexander, "Steal Away" by Jimmy Hughes, Aretha Franklin's "I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)," and Wilson Pickett's "Land of 1,000 Dances," to name just a few. Yet, Fame was also a laboratory of sorts for singers, musicians, songwriters and aspiring produces and engineers. Hall experimented with then cutting-edge recording techniques and allowed his staff to indulge, too (as he certainly wasn't paying them much). The studio became a playground for bohemian rednecks like Oldham, Penn, Donnie Fritts, and others, who, over the course of bewitchingly creative late nights fuelled by speed, booze and an insatiable love of rhythm and blues, created timeless music.
One of the most shocking realizations about that notion is not only were many of these songs generated via a kind of inspired yet hassle-free spontaneity, the recordings of them were never actually conceived as product for direct commercial consumption, rather they were by and large nothing more than demos of the songwriting catalog Fame Publishing had on offer. One thinks of a demo as a rough one-shot used to hash out the general compositional structure of a song. There's a raw immediacy to them that can be quite charming, powerful even, but they're inherently unfinished. The tracks here were redone more famously by others, but it's nothing short of maddening to consider that the passion, musicianship, and craft that went into many of the sides on this disc were never meant to see the light of day in the first place. The again, Penn never really seemed to care too much one way or the other anyway, or so the story goes.
A big hand to Ace, then, for finally making these lost gems available. The Fame Recordings is an absolute must-listen for anyone interested in putting together all the pieces of the remarkable puzzle that is southern soul music. It's also the final word in any discussion about Dan Penn as one of the geniuses of the American songbook.
Review by Bob Mehr on The Commercial Appeal:
Back in the mid-1960s, Dan Penn was what you'd call an all-nighter. A workaholic, a musical obsessive, he spent his wee hours at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., doing what he did best: wrestling songs to the ground.
Fueled by copious amounts of coffee, cigarettes and speed, and buoyed by a burning passion for R&B, Penn Ñ usually with his writing partner and pianist Spooner Oldham in tow Ñ would come to shape Southern soul music during those late nights.
"I had a big passion for what I was doing," says the 71-year-old Penn. "We'd start in the evening, fooling around, looking for an idea or a groove. Then we'd write and cut till 2, 3, 4 in the morning; sometimes we'd stay there till sun came up. We were young and had a lot of energy then but that seems like another lifetime ago."
Nearly a half-century after, Penn's work from the era has finally come to light. In October, U.K. reissue label Ace Records put out The Fame Recordings, a 24-song collection of Penn's previously unreleased songwriting demos. The CD represents the best of the some 100 tracks Penn recorded there between 1963 and 1966 Ñ including material later made famous by the likes of Otis Redding ("You Left the Water Running") Percy Sledge ("It Tears Me Up") and Arthur Alexander ("Rainbow Road").
Though he would become an iconic figure in the history of both Muscle Shoals and Memphis soul, as the author of such classics as "I'm Your Puppet," "Dark End Of The Street," "A Woman Left Lonely" and "Do Right Woman," as a solo artist Penn's output has been sporadic at best. There were a handful of 45s in the '60s, his classic 1973 album, Nobody's Fool, a few other one-off singles and aborted projects over the years, but nothing substantial until the mid-'90s.
For R&B fans, The Fame Recordings offer a new perspective on Penn. This week he returns to his old hometown of Memphis to perform for the first time in 16 years. On Thursday, he will appear at Rhodes College, playing a concert for the school's Mike Curb Institute for Music that will offer a look back at his life in song.
In the '50s, as a white kid growing up in Vernon, Ala., Wallace Daniel Pennington was glued to his transistor radio, entranced by the black music being spun by deejay John R. on Nashville's WLAC. "They were playing strictly black stuff, spirituals, R&B," says Penn. "Jimmy Reed, Ray Charles and James Brown were my heroes at the time. My ears just told me that's what was good. That was the start of it. And I kept leaning that way."
As a 16-year-old aspiring songwriter, Penn wrote a tune called "Is a Bluebird Blue." The song later became the B-side of a Conway Twitty pop hit and cemented Penn's career path. Between stints as a frat-circuit band leader, he got a job as a staff writer for Rick Hall's Fame publishing company and studio, a burgeoning hotbed of R&B and soul music that spawned artists like Arthur Alexander, Jimmy Hughes and Joe Simon.
"I just decided I really wanted to learn the art of the studio," says Penn. "I was a writer at Fame, but I was a gopher, too. If anyone needed some burgers or cigarettes, I'd go get them. I just wanted to hang out and learn something from everyone there, and I did."
Penn would spend much of his time cutting original material. Though they were never intended as commercial recordings, Penn's songwriting demos were a perfect union that brought together his classic material and potent R&B voice, with Fame's legendary Junior Lowe/Roger Hawkins/Jimmy Johnson/Spooner Oldham rhythm section providing the musical backing.
Remarkably, only a handful of people ever heard these tracks. Lost for years in a kind of legal limbo Ñ demos historically have been a murky area in terms of ownership Ñ occasionally some label would offer to put out the recordings.
"For 30 years people been trying to get me to put that stuff out, especially Europeans and the Japanese," says Penn. Prospective suitors would play for Penn lousy low-generation copies of the songs, and he'd always refuse to release the material." I just didn't like how they sounded and didn't want to put out something that wasn't good," he says.
Finally, a few years ago, the respected British label Ace Records struck a deal with Rick Hall and Fame to begin reissuing the company's catalog and exploring its collection of master tapes. Discovering the scope of quality of Penn's demos, Ace was determined to get the songs out into the world, even if the artist himself took some convincing.
"Dan's not a big guy for living in the past," says Ace's Alec Palao, who helped compile and produce the Penn project. Palo says he was struck by the quality of the recordings, which he saw as a vital piece of Southern soul history.
"Dan had such an authentic voice for what he was doing, compared to pretty much anyone I can think of during that era. It really strikes you when you look at it as a body of work, what a fantastic interpreter he was of his own material. And the tracks are really off the cuff Ñ these are late-night recordings yet Dan and the band were turning out masterpieces, literally, on a daily basis."
After Palao cleaned up and presented the tracks to him, even Penn had to agree the material was worth releasing. "I thought, 'Hey, I wouldn't mind hearing that come out.' Though I wasn't overjoyed with the screaming boy on there," says Penn of his younger inchoate self. "But that's what you do when you're young; you scream and try to get heard and noticed."
If Penn had perhaps tended to overlook his work at Fame, it was only because greater glories waited in Memphis. Having cowritten and engineered a chart success with "I'm Your Puppet" for James and Bobby Purify in the fall of 1966, Penn left Muscle Shoals for the Bluff City, to take a job working at Chips Moman's American Studios.
"The main reason I came to Memphis was I wanted to produce, and I felt I could get that freedom with Chips," says Penn. "At the time, Rick Hall shut me down on production and I was really wanting to make that next move. When young people want to move, you better move with them. So I was ready to go. And I came to Memphis and cut my big hit."
Penn cut more than just one, siring a succession of smash singles for pop-soul group the Box Tops, including "The Letter," "Cry Like a Baby" and "Soul Deep." But by 1970, Penn had reached loggerheads with Moman as well, over control and credits. He decided to start his own studio, Beautiful Sound, near the Memphis State University campus.
There, Penn completed his first full length solo LP, the cult classic Nobody's Fool, an album that was uniquely pitched somewhere between country, soul and pop. "It was a few years later than the stuff I'd done at Fame, and I'd changed," says Penn. "As I go along, I always change. I had a yearning to put on some more strings, and add some horns and get some voices. I liked that big sound."
Running a studio, however, was not Penn's strong suit. There were more costs than revenue, and too much responsibility. "Well, yeah, like making payments, and stuff like that," chuckles Penn. "And that was back in my drankin' days. I couldn't handle it, and I had to let the studio go. You don't learn anything until you lose, and I learned a lot out of that."
By 1974, Penn could see the writing on the wall for Memphis music: His own studio had faltered, Moman had closed up shop and left town, even Stax Records was failing.
"Everything just went flat in Memphis. Seemed like everything was soured up and it didn't look to me like it was going to get any better." He decided to head to Nashville, "where I've been for the last 40 years, even though I can't buy a hit up here," says Penn, laughing.
He actually did have some early success in Music City Ñ Ronnie Millsap's first chart record came with a version of Penn's "I Hate You" Ñ but the iconoclastic songwriter didn't fit easily into the cookie-cutter country music mold. Though he continued to enjoy the fruits of his back catalog and write new material, it wasn't until the mid-'90s that he resumed his own recording career. He cut a much-belated second solo album, Do Right Man, in 1994, toured the world with Spooner Oldham later in the decade, yielding the exquisite live collection Moments from This Theatre in 1999, and continued to release a series of home studio recordings.
In recent years, Penn's work has been the subject of a number of academic studies. In 2005, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison named Charles Hughes contacted Penn to interview him for his master's thesis on "the relationship between country and soul music, and African-American and white musicians in recording studios in Memphis, Nashville and Muscle Shoals." In 2012, Hughes Ñ who had gone on to get his Ph.D. Ñ became a Postdoctoral Fellow at Rhodes, and invited Penn to perform as part of the Curb Music Institute concert series.
For the upcoming show Penn will be accompanied by pianist, fellow songwriter, and former Memphian Bobby Emmons. He'll play two sets; one filled with his hits and familiar songs, and a second exploring the more obscure corners of his catalog, including the Fame material.
Nearly 50 years after his first flourish at Fame, Penn continues to write, though he's long since given up the chase for hits. "Tell you the truth, I just write for myself," he says. "I still write pretty much like I did back then Ñ other than the fact that I don't stay up all night. I do get some sleep nowadays."
Review by Pete Nickols on Sir Shambling's Deep Soul Heaven:
Dan Penn is rightly awarded legendary status by many southern-soul fans due the plethora of fine songs he wrote or co-wrote which, once recorded in that particular vein, became hallmarks of the musical sub-genre. Many of these 'released' interpretations were based closely on demos of his songs recorded by Dan himself, a country boy who, in his early years, 'got off' on R&B and could sing 'black' when the mood took him or when he was deliberately aiming a demo at a particular black R&B/soul performer. A figure as significant as Jerry Wexler made no bones about rating him as the best white soul-singer he ever heard.
However, Penn could sing in a number of styles, embracing pop, country and soul, as required; and this CD reflects all those styles, not just the 'soul' ones. This is quite understandable, as between 1964 and 1966, when most of these songs were laid down, Dan was simply Rick Hall's main 'gopher/songsmith' and, with Rick trying to make a success of his new Fame venture in any popular musical 'market' that would place his product, there was always going to be many different types of artist recording at Fame and therefore a demand for many different song-styles.
So, those expecting from this CD 24 tracks of unremitting blue-eyed southern-soul from Dan will be disappointed and the different styles featured on the CD are probably the reason it appears, not on Ace's soul-subsidiary 'Kent', but on the parent Ace label itself.
In a nutshell, while all of the recordings are of historical interest musically, not all will appeal to 'soul-only' fans and, purely aurally (as opposed to historically) the CD is 'patchy'.
What's more, one of Penn's finest soul demos is omitted. It's clear that Dan himself had major input into the final selection of the tracks to be featured here (the CD is called an Alec Palao and Dan Penn collaboration) and one wonders what caused him to omit his great demo of what became a truly wonderful piece of Fame-cut deep southern soul by Kip Anderson, "Without A Woman". No matter, at time of writing, you can access Dan's fine demo on You Tube here.
However, on now to the Dan Penn Fame demos which actually DO appear on this CD!
It's interesting that the opening track is a blatantly commercial piece of Chicago-meets-Detroit northern-soul, with no 'southern' feel whatsoever. It was James Barnett's early Fame 1001 single of "Keep On Talking" which became the first commercial recording of Penn and Oldham's song and, although a flop at the time, it later caught the ear of those in the British northern-soul fraternity who liked this kind of beat for showing off their egocentric solo dancing abilities. Penn's demo simply underlines the song's commercial 'pitch'. Arthur Conley's Fame version from May 1967, released on his "Shake Rattle & Roll" album, added nothing new. Phillip Mitchell's Fame-cut Smash version appeared on Kent's "Hall Of Fame" CDKEND 372 compilation.
Contrastingly, "Feed The Flame" is the real country-soul McCoy. Dan's emotive demo was pitched at Joe Tex but proved a launch pad for Billy Young to cut it at Fame in 1966 (unreleased at the time), although the normally impressive Young's version was no match for Ted Taylor's superior one, released on Atco and cut at Quinvy in February 1967. Percy Sledge would cut it also at Quinvy in mid-June that same year and Spencer Wiggins would take a nice shot at it at Fame in 1973 for his apparently never-issued XL 1347 single.
"Far From The Maddening Crowd" (clearly mis-titled after Thomas Hardy's fourth novel and with co-author Marlin Greene and Jeannie too on back-ups) is unashamedly 'uptown' in style, though needing a bigger arrangement to successfully ape the New York sound of the day (1965). Nevertheless, The Drifters did cut it that year on Atlantic 2298 with Johnny Moore on lead. At time of writing, you can hear their version here on You Tube.
Next it's back to a real deep southern soul gem, Penn and Oldham's "Uptight Good Woman", never better recorded than by the great Spencer Wiggins for Goldwax, although Solomon Burke and Wilson Pickett both did it credit, as did Laura Lee with her great distaff version "Uptight Good Man". Perhaps this one too was aimed originally at Joe Tex, as the demo sports a nice mid-break rap from Penn. If you're a member of the Yahoo southern soul group (and if not, why not?) you can access Penn and Oldham's even earlier work-tape of the song, uploaded to the group's File page (penultimate entry) by Rick Hall's son Rodney.
"Come Into My Heart" was never taken up by any other artist. It's a simple, repetitious piece but very emotionally sung by Penn, who manages to create an atmospheric pop-rock-soul performance out of pretty basic raw material. It's miles away from southern soul but I have to confess I rather like it.
Cut in 1966 as the last song Dan is known to have demoed at Fame before moving over to Chips Moman's American Studio in Memphis, his fine lay-back take on "Don't Lose Your Good Thing", includes some nice organ work from Spooner and an ear-catching, trilling guitar riff. Dan maintains it was just him and Spooner (and never Rick Hall) who penned the song, one which Jimmy Hughes used as his follow-up to "Why Not Tonight", which Etta James would cut also at Fame for her "Tell Mama" album and one which Jamaican duo The Blues Busters would cut in fine style for Shout at Fame in 1968 (this one mistakenly getting included on the first pressings of their Shout 235 single before being replaced by "I Can't Stop").
"Come On Over" from 1965 is an unimpressive rocking piece of pop which Ben Atkins cut at Fame using the same backing-track but which only saw release on Youngstown (a Chips Moman label) in 1967 after Penn had migrated to Moman's studio.
1964's "Rainbow Road" (a Penn and Donnie Fritts collaboration) has Rick Hall on banjo and a chain-gang "oh-ah" vocal back-up, apparently inserted at Rick's request to make the song potentially more commercial. Both Fritts and Penn confirm the song was never written about Arthur Alexander but simply potentially for him to record sometime after his early Fame hit "You Better Move On", although with Arthur moving to Dot, the singer never cut the song till much later. Percy Sledge, Joe Simon and Bill Brandon all cut it before Arthur did, and Brandon's version is the most soulful to my ears, and certainly vastly superior to the unimpressive Penn demo.
"Unfair", a Penn tune written even earlier than its late 1963/early 1964 recording date, is a soundalike of the seemingly ever-popular (though certainly not with me) "Since I Fell For You". Dan's vocal abilities are well demonstrated but on a 'nothing' song which, to her credit, Barbara Lynn later managed to make something of.
"Strangest Feeling" was another early demo from Dan (cut with his then group the Mark V) of a song that I've never rated. It's simply a run-of-the-mill late-night blues song with an incongruous introductory and occasionally interjected jazzy-tempoed guitar riff. I'm not even all that keen on Bill Brandon and Ted Taylor's later versions.
Forget altogether the naff quasi-uptown July '65-cuts "The Thin Line", which deservedly never got taken up by anyone, the very schmaltzy teeny pop-ballad "I Do" and "Do Something", which the sleeve-notes accurately describe as Boondocks-meets-Motown and could only have been made even mildly palatable by someone like, perhaps, Gene Pitney.
Earlier still, in January 1965, Dan produced a very lay-back pop ballad called "I Need A Lot Of Loving" which Louis Williams gave the Sam Cooke treatment on the Ovations 1966 version for Goldwax, while the wicked Pickett gave it a bit more oomph on his May '66 cut used on his 1967 "The Sound Of" album. The best-ever version by a mile, though, is the driving-soul Fame recording of it for Amy, cut shortly after Pickett's version, by Mighty Sam (McClain).
Also ala Sam Cooke was Dan's appealing lay-back Spring '65 demo of "I'm Living Good" which again proved just fine for Louis Williams when he duly lead the Ovations on it, while Arthur Conley also made a good job of the song and Rosey Grier and Freddie Waters went on to later cover it too.
Back again to January 1965 and "Take A Good Look" is a nicely humourous piece of country-soul. Once more, it's very Joe Tex orientated although the issued version was recorded by James Barnett.
From the same period, Dan's fine demo of "It Tears Me Up" again includes a mid-track rap, never included by Percy Sledge on his big hit of the song. Later versions I like are Johnny Adams' 'take' for Rounder in 1998 and one by the impressive Charles Walker, whose 2003 interpretation for Zane retains the mid-track rap and is so good that for me it even rivals Percy's imperious recording.
Spring '65 saw Dan demo the poppish mid-pacer "Power Of Love", recorded at Fame for Papa Don on Amy 985 by the girl duo Double Image, who were 16 year olds Charlyne Kilpatrick and Shirley Paris. They'd been singing around Pensacola, Fla. since they were about 13 as two-thirds of the Sandpipers. If you absolutely must, you can hear their teeny-pop Amy version of this song here.
I wouldn't bother!
"Everytime" is appalling pacy dross and best track-skipped!
"You Left The Water Running", possibly from as early as 1964, has an extremely corny (probably farfisa) organ riff and is Sam Cooke-ish in its vocal delivery. This very basic early demo really doesn't lend itself to many re-plays, which is surprising for a fundamentally fine song which was so well interpreted by the likes of Sam & Dave, Maurice & Mac and the Purifys (who all 'duo-ed' it), Don Varner, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Doris Allen and James Govan, who all 'solo-ed' it and even Booker T, who instrumentalised it. However, the best-remembered hit-version remains that by Barbara Lynn.
Spring 65's demo of "Slippin' Around" is a competent enough run-through of this bouncy soul opus which became an unexceptional Fame vehicle for Art Freeman, Jimmy Hughes and Clarence Carter.
So much better, though, is Dan's emotive if very country-styled recording of his song "Take Me (Just As I Am)", which was actually released as his own second Fame single in May 1965 under the name Lonnie Ray. The song became immortalised as a southern-soul gem thanks to the likes of Arthur Conley, Solomon Burke and Spencer Wiggins. Mitty Collier also cut a decidedly tougher-sounding unissued-at-the-time version at Fame in 1968 for Chess and Z.Z. Hill did it due credit at Quinvy on 7 October 1969.
"Long Ago" was co-penned with Bob Ð not Buddy Ð Killen, who was the organist with the local various-personnel live group and Quinvy recording artists, the Wee-Juns. Ben & Spence cut a very fine unissued version at Fame (which now appears on "Hall Of Fame Volume 2" on CDKEND 386), but I believe the song was first commercially recorded by Bobby Patterson in '67 on Jetstar 108 and then, in '68, by Ted Taylor on Ronn 33 (as well as on his "You Can Dig It!" Ronn LPS 7529 LP). The sleeve-notes to Kent's "Hall Of Fame" Volume 2 set tell us that these two recordings were also both cut at Rick's studio.
I've never liked "I'm Your Puppet" (originally called by Dan simply "The Puppet"). It's a sad little song with good lyrics but it's always been just too pop and too fey for me, and that even includes the Purify's hit version. Many others have cut it, including fellow duos Sam & Dave, Mel & Tim and even Marvin Gaye and Tami Terrell, plus solo artists like Geno Washington and Irma Thomas.
Review by Caspar Llewellyn Smith of The Guardian:
The name of Dan Penn might not be well known to the general public, although several of the songs that he's helped write are soul standards Ð Dark End of the Street or Do Right Woman, Do Right Man, for instance; aficionados have long been aware of him thanks to Peter Guralnick's classic account of the Muscle Shoals scene in the 60s, Sweet Soul Music. In the appendices of that book, Guralnick recommended a whole bunch of discs and bootlegs for fans' listening pleasure; but while he raved about the early demos Penn recorded at Rick Hall's FAME Studios, even in the era of Spotify they have always proved frustratingly hard to come by Ð until now. So does this 24-track collection constitute the sine qua non of blue-eyed soul? Listen to cuts like Rainbow Road and You Left The Water Running (both substantially different to more familiar versions), and anyone will answer: you betcha.
Review on Rubber City Review:
One of the most soulful and satisfying reissues from the label that does it better than anyone Ð UK-based Ace Records Ð features a major figure in the Muscle Shoals music scene, Dan Penn.
A native of Vernon, Alabama, the former Wallace Daniel Pennington gained renown mostly as a songwriter and producer. He started writing and recording back in the early '60s in the Muscle Shoals area, primarily at FAME Studios. Penn eventually left for Memphis in 1966, where he wrote soul classics like The Dark End of the Street with record man Chips Moman. But this collection focuses squarely on 24 sides that Penn cut at FAME, with little involvement from the studio's otherwise domineering owner and producer, Rick Hall (mainly because Penn and his musical cohorts liked to record late at night).
Most of the songs are co-written by another Muscle Shoals legend, keyboard player Spooner Oldham. All of them feature Penn's searing vocals Ð one of the main reasons why I can't pry myself away from this collection.
Of course you'd also expect some clever wordplay from the guy who co-wrote I'm Your Puppet, Do Right Woman, Sweet Inspiration, Take Me (Just As I Am) and many other classics of southern soul. And you'll find plenty of that on The Fame Recordings. "Take a good look, take your last look at me walking out your door; take a good look at my good looksÉ I won't be back no more." As Penn points out in an interview with Alec Palao (liner notes), "that's one that got away, nobody ever had a hit on it." And you'd be hard-pressed to find a better prison song than the chain-gang lament Rainbow Road, immortalized by Arthur Alexander in 1972 (Penn: "I know Rick arranged this, because there's a damn banjo!").
But Penn's gutsy, go-for-broke singing is the real star of the show here Ð that, and the deep, fat sound of the FAME Studios' house band (two different lineups, actually) in glorious mono. At one point or another during his three-year run at FAME, Penn's backup musicians included Spooner, Junior Lowe (bass/guitar), Jimmy Johnson (guitar), Roger Hawkins (drums), David Briggs (keys), Norbert Putnam (bass) and Jerry Carrigan (drums).
It's a real joy to hear the dominant sounds of the era Ð soul, rock, Brill Building pop, Motown, blues Ð filtered through a group of relatively unschooled white guys from the deep south. "Far from the Maddening Crowd" is Penn's take on the uptown New York sound of Ben E. King, Bobby Darin and The Shirelles (he must've been on to something, because The Drifters cut this one in '65).
The one-two punch of Penn's blue-eyed soul singing and his dream band of session pros left me searching for any credible reason why all of these tracks (except Take Me) haven't seen the light of day over the past five decades. Who in their right mind would toss "Don't Lose Your Good Thing" one on top of the "don't release" stack?
Well, that person was probably Hall, who might've felt that his best hope at the time was with black artists like Joe Tex and Jimmy Hughes. And it looks like Penn bought into that approach too. Even though he spent much of his teenage years touring the south with his fearsome R&B band The Pallbearers (with their own hearse, of course), Penn never considered himself much of a performer. So he didn't have any problem shifting his focus to songwriting Ð especially when he started to see the royalty checks from Puppet, a huge hit for James & Bobby Purify in 1966.
As great as Penn sounds on these recordings, you have to respect his estimation of how artists like Otis Redding improved on his originals. For the sake of argument, I've sampled a slice of Penn's take on You Left the Water Running next to Redding's demo, recorded at FAME in '66. "It was a good song from the park on," he told Palao, "but it never took wing until Otis got a hold of it that night, and in just a few minutes transformed it: (sings) you left all the water running."
I'm a big fan of Penn's '94 release "Do Right Man" Ð as good as any soul album that's been recorded over the past 20 years. So I also found it interesting to compare this older, wiser guy with his younger self. On this sample, you can hear his original version of It Tears Me Up (recorded in '65 and covered a year later by Percy Sledge) next to the remake from "Do Right Man." If anything, Penn's voice grew more nuanced and expressive over the years.
I could drone on a lot more about these long-lost recordings (the liner notes include a nice description of the "ping pong" technique that Penn employed with the studio's two 1/4-in. tape decks to overdub vocals and other instruments). But I'll refrain and just share a couple more favorites.
As I pointed out earlier, Penn covered a lot of ground stylistically, with nods to (among others) Joe Tex, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Sam Cooke, Marvin GayeÉ basically just about every black artist who inspired him. On "Come Into My Heart", he gets his Motown on to great effect.
Dan Penn is alive and well, living in Nashville with his wife of nearly 50 years, Linda. He doesn't have an active website and, aside from a placeholder on Facebook, seems indifferent to social media (further proof of a higher force). But he still performs now and then (I think), so if you're spending any time in the Nashville area, pay attention.
Article by Ed Ward on NPR Music:
Fame Studios and the Road to Nashville Songwriting Glory
Wallace Daniel Pennington grew up singing. His father played guitar and his mother played piano, and by the age of 9, the young man had a guitar of his own. The family attended church on Sunday and Wednesday each week, and to this day, Dan Penn says he remembers the entire Methodist congregation belting out hymns.
Songwriter and producer Dan Penn has written classic songs such as "Dark End of the Street" and "Do Right Man, Do Right Woman." A new album from Ace Records collects some of his demos.
Songwriter and producer Dan Penn has written classic songs such as "Dark End of the Street" and "Do Right Man, Do Right Woman." A new album from Ace Records collects some of his demos.
As his family's only boy, Penn got his own room, and in it was a little green radio he used to smuggle beneath the sheets at night so he could listen to WLAC from Chicago. He particularly favored black gospel music, in which he recognized some of the same feelings his white church music evoked. He started playing in bands, and at one point took over the caller's position in a square-dance combo. One of its musicians was Billy Sherrill, who invited Penn to Florence, Ala., to make a record. Not much came of that, but one day in 1960, one of his songs Ñ "Is a Bluebird Blue" Ñ found its way to Nashville, where Conway Twitty recorded it and turned it into a hit.
The next five years saw Penn writing songs at Fame and playing in a band, Dan Penn and the Pallbearers, at fraternity and bar gigs all over the South. The piano player was an old friend, Donnie Fritts, and they started writing together.
The song "Rainbow Road" convinced Penn he was on the right track, although the artist they wrote it for, Arthur Alexander, didn't cut it for many years and it remained unissued. Then, in 1965, the entire Fame studio band Ñ who were also the Pallbearers Ñ left en masse for Nashville. Penn says he remembers getting the news and sitting in his car in front of the studio feeling awful. He kept staring at the door.
"And then it occurred to me," he told researcher Alec Palao, "that's not only a door, that's the door." Performing was just one way to do what he wanted, and it was contributing to his drinking problem and keeping him poor. He walked in the door, determined to make records, learn to produce and keep writing songs.
"Son of a Preacher Man" was Dusty Springfield's debut on Atlantic. The entire album that spawned it, Dusty in Memphis, was recorded at American Studios.
The band's departure meant that new musicians arrived almost immediately, including a skinny keyboard player named Spooner Oldham. He and Penn sat down to see if they could write together. As it turned out, they could.
Fame soon became known not only as a place that had a great studio band and a great engineer, but also a place where some of the best songwriters were working. A lot of people took advantage of it. In fact, there was so much good stuff on those Dan Penn demos that a lot of it never got covered.
Penn didn't much like making records himself, and Rick Hall, Fame's owner and engineer, wasn't letting him produce them. In the summer of 1966, another Fame alumnus, Chips Moman, lured Penn to his studio in Memphis, and the first part of Penn's story was over. He would continue to write great songs, of course Ñ and, now that he's older and more comfortable with performing, he plays the occasional gig. But it was at Fame that the Dan Penn legend was cemented.
Review on Stuck in the Past:
Born in Alabama in 1941, Dan Penn became an R&B enthusiast at a young age. He had himself a band, Dan Penn & The Pallbearers, who played around Alabama and Mississippi. He was the lead singer, and his wonderful voice made him more than capable of handling the music that at the time was exclusively the domain of black people. He also began to write songs, which gave him no small measure of success, his earliest hit being "Is A Bluebird Blue", which Conway Twitty took to #35 in 1960. He soon shifted his focus away from performing and towards writing, finding his home in the studio. The studio in question was Rick Hall's FAME Studios, in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. He recorded a few singles for Hall, but they didn't go anywhere, and so he focused on writing. With keyboardist Spooner Oldham as his main writing partner, he was responsible for a vast canon of works, songs recorded by the various R&B artists at FAME. His songs from this era included classics such as "I'm Your Puppet", "You Left The Water Running", "Rainbow Road", "It Tears Me Up", "(Take Me) Just As I Am" and "I'm Living Good". Among the artists that recorded these songs at FAME were James & Bobby Purify, Mitty Collier, James Barnett, Clarence Carter, Jimmy Hughes, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, The Ovations, Joe Simon, Maurice & Mac, Laura Lee, Billy Young and Percy Sledge.
It is a real shame that Penn never released any of his own recordings during this period at FAME (his debut solo album didn't come until 1972). However recently a 24-track compilation of demos has been released, and it's turned out to be a real revelation! The original demo recordings of these songs, recorded with Oldham and the other musicians at FAME, are brilliant and easily good enough quality to have been released. In many cases they rival or better the full production versions from the other artists, and Penn's voice was at its finest at this stage in his career. The Fame Recordings thus makes for an incredible lost album, a vital piece in the puzzle that is 60s Southern soul. These recordings are both masterpieces of country-soul and perfect little pop songs; testimony to Penn's reputation as the elusive white hero in a scene which was dominated by black singers.
In 1966 Penn and Oldham left FAME, and moved to Memphis to work at Chips Moman's American Sound Studio. The songs that came from their partnership have since been covered by Arthur Alexander, James Carr, The Box Tops, Barbara Lynn, Solomon Burke, Tony Joe White, The Sweet Inspirations, Charlie Rich, Dionne Warwick, Arthur Conley, Etta James, Ronnie Milsap, Patti Labelle, Irma Thomas... The list goes on.
Review on Red Lick:
Dan Penn was one of the great songwriters of the latter half of the twentieth century and a particular favourite writer of many southern soul stars who were always on the look out for their next big hit.
As well as providing songs for others, there was a time when Dan had aspirations for his own recording career and was supported in this by Fame with whom he served his apprenticeship. Many of the songs that would later be snapped up by others had been developed by Dan, the session musicians of Fame and the engineers with whom he worked closely in sessions during studio down-time. Few of the results of these sessions have previously come to light but, as part of Ace's extensive trawl through the vaults of Fame, we now have a full 24 recordings of Dan the singer.
Whether Fame ever intended these for an ultimate release that, for whatever reason, did not happen or simply as fully developed demos of his songs to show them off as they would like them sung by others is unknown. Either way the standard of his singing, the delivery of the musicians and, most of all, the sheer quality of the songs on show potentially make this one of the great lost soul albums.
Just get a load of his version of The Puppet (aka I'm Your Puppet), Feed The Flame, Rainbow Road or It Tears Me Up and it is difficult to see the sense of keeping these jewels tucked away in the archives. There are also songs new to me that are a knockout - such as Take A Good Look - and far too good not to attain a wider hearing now.
Thankfully Ace has come along to facilitate this wider hearing and I for one am highly grateful. Let's just hope that the vaults offer more buried treasure as good as this.
Review by Trevor J. Leeden of Rhythms Music Magazine:
He's the secret weapon of '60s southern soul and R&B. Dan Penn is, by any measure, one of the truly great songsmiths of the last fifty years. This 24-song compilation takes you back to the embryonic songwriter of the FAME Studios period 1963 to 1966, when the formative shape of things to come was being moulded. In collaboration primarily with Spooner Oldham, Penn was extraordinarily prolific and defined the Muscle Shoals R&B sound, delivering countless classic cuts to myriad soul and crossover artists such as James Carr, The Box Tops, Arthur Alexander, Bobby & James Purify, and Otis Redding. With a few exceptions, the recordings here pre-date the high water mark of his stellar writing career and focus on the developing accomplished recording artist he was evolving into.
That Penn never became a major recording artist in his own write (sic) is more a product of his own desire to shun the limelight than any lack of singing ability. Having been given the late night freedom of the studio, Penn was able to refine his Ray Charles/Bobby Bland inspired rasp and record dozens of demos of the songs that would ultimately carry others to wider fame. And so here you hear 'The Puppet' before it was delivered to Bobby & James Purify as 'I'm Your Puppet', and the original templates for 'You Left The Water Running' and 'Rainbow Road' before Otis Redding and Arthur Alexander immortalised them. It's purely subjective, but a strong case can be made that Penn's own demo versions of his songs are a match to those of his benefactors; indeed, his 1963 recording of 'Keep On Talking' is every bit the equal of James Barnett's chartbuster. Or have a listen to his Joe Tex inspired vocals on 'Uptight Good Woman', two minutes of soulful pleading that lays the future foundations for Spencer Wiggins; 'It Tears Me Up', recorded hours after being written, bears the arrangement later made famous by Percy Sledge.
Look, I could go on and on about this great collection (yet another from the brilliant ACE label), but the thing is, it's simply one outstanding performance after another. Dan Penn's contribution to popular music transcends simple categorisation. Here you have the opportunity to enjoy for yourself the very essence of southern soul in its infancy from the man who, more than any other, defined the irresistible sound. Packaged with a 2- page booklet featuring interviews with Spooner Oldham, Marlin Greene and Rick Hall that extol the artistry of Penn, as well as an interview with the man himself, memories truly are made of this.
Review by Terry Staunton of Record Collector Magazine:
As a songwriter, frequently in tandem with Chips Moman or Spooner Oldham, Penn is one of the most celebrated names of 60s soul and R&B, courtesy of such evergreen classics as Dark End Of The Street, Do Right Woman and Cry Like A Baby. This collection brings together his finest moments as a performer, from the three-year period he spent as staff writer at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals.
It's a Southern soul masterclass from start to finish, from the finger-popping vibes of Far From The Maddening Crowd to the countrified groove of I Need A Lot Of Loving, the testifying melodrama of It Tears Me Up (later a hit for Percy Sledge) to the feisty go-go of Slippin' Around With You. More often than not, these songs were committed to tape just hours after they were written, and the recordings benefit from such bold spontaneity.
Never the most technically gifted singer, Penn's croaky note-bending voice nonetheless adds vital colour to his tales of hurt and woe. It brings a plaintive, yearning quality to the material, though the earnestness of his delivery on I'm Your Puppet is as powerful and affecting as anything in Sam Cooke's back catalogue.
LP track listing
Side One
1. "Keep on Talking" (Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 2:37
2. "Feed the Flame" (Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 2:18
3. "Far from the Maddening Crowd" (Marlin Greene, Dan Penn) - 2:27
4. "Uptight Good Woman" (Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 2:28
5. "Come on Over" (Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 2:25
6. "Unfair" (Dan Penn) - 1:50
Side Two
7. "Rainbow Road" (Donnie Fritts, Dan Penn) - 2:48
8. "Come into My Heart" (Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 3:12
9. "Don't Lose Your Good Thing" (Bob Killen, Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 2:49
10. "The Thin Line" (Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 2:11
11. "I Need a Lot of Loving" (Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 2:25
12. "Take a Good Look" (Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 2:38
Side Three
13. "Power of Love" (Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 2:39
14. "It Tears Me Up" (Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 2:44
15. "Strangest Feeling" (Dan Penn) - 2:58
16. "Do Something (Even If It's Wrong)" (Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 2:46
17. "I Do" (Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 2:28
18. "Everytime" (Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 2:31
Side Four
19. "You Left the Water Running" (Oscar Franck, Rick Hall, Dan Penn) - 2:21
20. "(Take Me) Just as I Am" (Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 2:44
21. "Slippin' Around with You" (Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 2:59
22. "I'm Living Good" (Spooner Oldham, Dan Penn) - 2:32
23. "Long Ago" (Bob Killen, Dan Penn) - 2:35
24. "The Puppet (aka I'm Your Puppet)" (Dan Penn) - 2:48
Personnel:
* Dann Penn - vocals
* plus various Muscle Shoals musicians