Wallace Daniel Pennington was born in a small farming community called Molloy in 1941. In 1957 his family moved to Vernon, Alabama, near Muscle Shoals, where Penn joined a band (Benny Cagle and the Rhythm Swingers). This gave him the opportunity to play and sing some of the songs that he had started writing, including “Is a Bluebird Blue?”, which was picked up by Conway Twitty, who released his version in 1959. Penn later joined the Mark V band, before forming Dan Penn & the Pallbearers.
He also began working as a songwriter at the SPAR studio in the Shoals, where he met Rick Hall. One of the first things that Hall did when he built his new studio was to offer Penn a job. Hall clearly understood that in popular music, everything starts with the song. Penn has spoken about taking up the offer: “Rick Hall built himself a studio, Fame, and wanted me to write for him. He was good enough to pay me 25 bucks a week, so I started writing for him in ’63 and moved to Muscle Shoals from my hometown in Vernon, Alabama”. (See John Pidgeon’s article in the Online Library of Music Journalism, 1991).
Penn had grown up listening to a wide range of music. He was comfortable with a variety of musical styles, and that was going to stand him in good stead in the years to come. One key element in his musical education had come through the radio broadcasts that he had heard on the Nashville station WLAC, which was playing spirituals and R&B for a Black audience. The impact of the music on him was considerable: “My ears just told me what was good. That was the start of it”. (Quoted on the Memphis Music Hall of Fame website).
In 1963 Penn was just happy to be involved with the music that he loved. His friends were in the studio with him, and Rick Hall was dreaming of making FAME famous. Penn involved himself in every aspect of work in the studio, acting as Hall’s right-hand man. When the members of the first FAME session band all left, Penn took the decision to abandon singing and playing guitar and to concentrate on songwriting. In addition, he set about building his technical skills and learning how to be an effective record producer: “That’s what I’m gonna be, a studio cat” (Memphis Music Hall of Fame website).
After the disappointment of his friends leaving, he needed to get things moving again, and he soon found the way. He had already crossed paths with Spooner Oldham, as they had met while playing in different local bands. Oldham had also worked for Rick Hall on various sessions, including overdubbing a Hammond organ part on to Arthur Alexander’s “You Better Move On”. Penn and Oldham started writing songs together, by simply working out ideas on guitar and piano that they felt would suit the Soul and R&B market. Their first success came when Joe Simon recorded “Let’s Do It Over” in 1965, with Rick Hall producing. The single was released on Vee-Jay Records, spending four months in the top twenty of the national charts.
From this small beginning, Penn and Oldham went on to establish themselves as major songwriters. Percy Sledge recorded “It Tears Me Up” and James and Bobby Purify picked up “I’m Your Puppet” in 1966. That same year, Penn was one of the writers of “You Left the Water Running”, along with Rick Hall and Oscar Franck, which was recorded by Billy Young on the Chess label. The song was also set to be covered by Wilson Pickett. When Otis Redding came visiting FAME just before Pickett was due, Rick Hall asked Otis to record a demo of the song, to help with the set-up. Pickett made his recording soon after. Many years later, Otis’ version appeared on 1987’s “The Otis Redding Story”.
A new session band was formed by Rick Hall, and things were looking better for Dan Penn. However, although the songwriting was going well, his other ambition was to produce records and, with Rick Hall firmly in the driving seat, that wasn’t happening. Once more, Penn took a bold decision. He had started working for Press Publishing in Memphis in 1966 and had crossed paths with Chips Moman, the boss at American Sound Studio in that city. Now the chance came to work with Moman, songwriting and producing. Penn seized the chance.
Two Moman/Penn songs from 1967 are absolute classics, James Carr’s “The Dark End of the Street” and Aretha Franklin’s “Do Right Woman – Do Right Man”. And finally in that same year, Penn produced his first hit single. The Box Tops came to American Sound Studio to record a Wayne Carson song “The Letter”, with Penn entrusted with production duties. The single sold over a million copies and stayed at the top of the Billboard Hot 100 for four weeks. Dan Penn had made some very good decisions!
A few years later, Penn was able to leave American Sound and set up his own studio in Memphis which he called Beautiful Sounds. This gave him the opportunity to start performing again and in 1972 he recorded his debut album “Nobody’s Fool”, which features a couple of tracks written by Penn with Spooner Oldham, “Ain’t No Love” and “Raining in Memphis”.
Twenty years later, Penn released a solo album called “Do Right Man”, which highlights songs that he wrote at Muscle Shoals with Spooner Oldham and then went on to release a live album “Moments From This Theatre” with Oldham in 1998. In the new century, Penn moved to Nashville, where he set up another studio and formed a record label (Dandy Records). Three more albums have been released: “Blue Nite Lounge” (2001), “Junkyard Junkie” (2008) and “The Fame Recordings” (2012), the last of which features twenty-three previously unreleased songs from the years in Muscle Shoals. Fittingly, he was inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame in 2013.
Dan Penn’s 2012 album on Kent Records
(Used with permission of Ace Records UK)
