Dan Penn Interview - Hall Of Fame Songwriter And Producer

Dan Penn has long been known as an acclaimed soul/R&B/country songwriter, singer, producer and musician. He was a main contributor to the Memphis and Muscle Shoals classic sound of the ‘60s and ‘70s, and he’s written many enduring hit songs. For his lifetime of musical creativity, Penn is being inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Penn will be formally inducted into the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame during their gala event on Wednesday, November 6. He will be inducted in the Hall along with other renowned songwriters including Liz Rose (who co-wrote many hits with Taylor Swift), David Bellamy of hit country duo The Bellamy Brothers, Victoria Shaw and Al Anderson.

About his new Hall of Fame honor, Penn said, “I wasn’t looking for an award, but it came to me, and I’m proud.”

Born in Vernon, Alabama, Penn has written such classic hits as “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” (a hit for Aretha Franklin), “Cry Like a Baby” (The Box Tops), “I’m Your Puppet” (James & Bobby Purify), “The Dark End of the Street” (James Carr) and “Sweet Inspiration” (The Sweet Inspirations). Several of Penn’s hits were written with legendary songwriter & musician, Spooner Oldham.

Penn has also written songs for many other top artists such as Janis Joplin, Otis Redding, Hank Williams Jr., Sam & Dave, Percy Sledge, Charlie Rich, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bobby Blue Bland, Solomon Burke, Wilson Pickett, Albert King, Clarence Carter, Ronnie Milsap, Alex Chilton and Nick Lowe.

Penn was a teenager when he wrote his first hit, “Is A Bluebird Blue” by Conway Twitty. His musical journey took him to three of the South’s top music meccas—Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville. Starting as the first staff songwriter at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Penn relocated in 1966 to Memphis and teamed with legendary producer Chips Moman to write the hits “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” (an R&B hit for Aretha Franklin and country hit for Barbara Mandrell), as well as the R&B hit “The Dark End of the Street” for James Carr. Notably, the latter recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2016.

Then in the early ‘70s, after writing several soul/R&B hits, Penn moved east to Nashville where he wrote the country hits, Johnny Rodriguez’s “Hillbilly Heart” and T.G. Sheppard’s “Another Woman.” In addition, Kris Kristofferson, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton & Porter Wagoner, John Prine and Mickey Gilley cut some of Penn’s tunes.

Here’s the audio of Aretha Franklin’s hit “Do Right Woman, Do
Right Man,” which was co-written by Dan Penn.

We are pleased to do this new Q&A interview with Dan Penn, He tells the story behind several of his classic hits, and his continuing songwriting journey.

BC: I’d like to ask you about the stories behind some of your big hits starting with Aretha Franklin’s “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man.”

Dan Penn: Chips Moman and I wrote the song at his house. We had a quail dinner there at his house and after that, we went off into another room where there was a guitar, a super 400 Gibson standing against the wall. He was a great guitar player. He started playing and I started singing, and next thing you know we had everything except the bridge. We worked it out when we got back to Memphis. He was called to the Muscle Shoals’ Aretha Franklin session to play guitar, and I said I’m going too. I had just left Muscle Shoals and moved to Memphis. It wasn’t long, maybe within a year, before they decided to bring her in. Jerry Wexler (Atlantic Records producer) decided to take Aretha to Muscle Shoals to FAME Studio. I was a FAME writer, so I was like a fly on the wall. I had been that way for years. That’s the way I learned to cut records and write songs, watching a lot of good people come through there.

Mr. Wexler came to me and said, “Dan, I’ll cut that song, but Aretha’s not ready to sing it. She doesn’t know it but she likes it. I’ll track it, if you’ll do the talent vocal on it.” I had to do it in her key. It was high! But I got enough on there for him to get through. It left there real sparse with a drum lick every once in a while, and a little organ. As they started running that song down, that’s when all the crap hit the fan—everybody got mad because somebody said something to her or something. Wexler decided to pull her out of there after one day, take her back to New York and he said he wanted to bring all the guys that were in Muscle Shoals. I said I’m going too. So, we go up there and we got off the elevator and Mr. Wexler said, “Dan, you and Chips, come with me.” And we went to the Atlantic control room. He played us what we now hear—Aretha playing piano and singing, her sisters singing and the whole bit. I was blown away because I didn’t really think it would ever amount to anything since it left there so sparse. But it sounded great. I looked forward and saw a big 8-track tape machine, and I said anything can happen with an 8-track.That was a big surprise and one of my highlights.

Here’s the audio of The Box Tops’ hit “Cry Like a Baby,”
which was co-written by Dan Penn.

[Wexler] cut a lot of real smooth, string type of sessions with her, and they weren’t selling. So, he decided to bring her to the funky little place called Muscle Shoals. People were already getting hits out of there. It had become a smooth hotspot. They cut “I Never Loved a Man,” which became a really big hit. But on the B side of that, they put “Do Right Woman,” our song. They played that song and it played and played and all of a sudden they turned it over and it was a big hit. So we got to ride free and we got a hit.

BC: You had another big hit with the Box Tops’ “Cry Like a Baby.” How did that develop?

Penn: I had cut “The Letter” (a classic hit for The Box Tops). I didn’t write that song. Wayne Carson wrote that song, but I produced the record. It went big. It was a number one record for a long time. Then, it was time to come up with something else, for the follow-up hit. And the people from (the label in) New York, they would come here so every often and tell me how bad [The Box Tops] needed another hit. I started asking around, but nobody would send me any songs.

So I called Spooner (Oldham) and said, “We’re gonna have to write the next Box Tops hit.” So we went over to American Studio there in Memphis, and we wrote all night and all day, but we couldn’t come up with nothing. Finally, I said, “Spooner, lets go across the street, eat breakfast and go home.” We took a booth and we ordered, and now we’re just sitting there looking at each other. Spooner, out of nowhere, dropped his head on the table and said, “I could just cry like a baby.” I said, “Spooner! That’s it.” All the fireworks went off, and we went right back to the studio across the street and wrote the song. We had Alex Chilton and the band coming in at 10 that morning. So we made our session and it became a pretty good hit too.

BC: You wrote several hits with Spooner Oldham. How did you two first meet and decide to write?

Penn: Way back there, when I first came to Florence, Alabama, I had written a song, “Is the Bluebird Blue.” It was a hit for Conway Twitty. I had gone to the studio in Florence, and I started meeting a lot of people. I met Spooner—he’s a great guy. I liked him, and he liked me and I knew he was a good piano player.

Here’s the audio of James Carr’s hit “The Dark End of the Street,”
which was co-written by Dan Penn.

BC: Who wrote the lyrics, and who wrote the music?

Penn: We wrote them together. He plays, I sing or played guitar and sang. I try to get some fun in my songs, so if me and Spooner are playing together, and we’re writing what we’re happy with, there’s some fun built into it. (Hit songwriter) Wayne Carson could get up at 8:30 in the morning, drink a cup of coffee, and write three songs, and two of them would be good. But that wasn’t me and that wasn’t Spooner. My co-writes with him and others were basically a hang…just to hang out and we’re going to write a song. That’s the idea. We called it a co-write, but we may go bowling first. We’ve got to do something to keep the excitement, and that’s what you need is some excitement. At least that’s me.

BC: You have plenty of songs in your catalog that have been successful including James Carr’s classic, “The Dark End of the Street.” How did that song come about?

Penn: We were hanging out with some other folks and I just stepped into the next room, and there was a guitar sitting there. We were in the Anchor Motel (in Nashville). Chips Moman grabbed the guitar and I started singing, and before you know it, we had written “The Dark End of the Street.” Then we went back to Memphis and put down a little demo.

The way it worked at American in Memphis—whoever was coming up got the best songs. If you were the next guy recording, you got the best song if you wanted it. Quinton Claunch, the producer of James Carr, heard “The Dark End of the Street,” and James liked it. I love that record. I’ve had it cut many times and I’ve even cut it myself, but I’ve never beat James’ version and nobody else has either. It just has a feel to it I can’t explain.

BC: With your song “Sweet Inspirations,” which came first? The name of the group Sweet Inspirations or the song, “Sweet Inspirations?”

Here’s the audio of James & Bobby Purify’s hit “I’m Your Puppet,”
which was co-written by Dan Penn.

Penn: Which came first—the chicken or the egg? (laughter) The girls were brought in from New York and were called the Sweet Inspirations. Me and Spooner were going through the studio and they were cutting. The song we heard wasn’t too good. I asked Spooner if he wanted to write something for them. We went to the writing room upstairs and wrote a song. I asked him what are we going to call it. He said, “Well, they’re called the Sweet Inspirations.” I said, “Well, that’s good enough for me. Let’s just call it that.” They all fell for it and cut it. They were a good group. Cissy Houston, the mother of Whitney Houston, was the lead singer in the Sweet Inspirations.

BC: Let me ask about one more hit—James & Bobby Purify’s “I’m Your Puppet.” Tell me about that song.

Penn: That was a great little record; I was the engineer on that record. That was my first engineering hit. I cut it at FAME and Don Schroeder produced it. I engineered it for him, and the boys from Muscle Shoals were the players on it. Of all my songs, that’s the one that everybody thinks of more than any other. They will just tell you. I love “I’m Your Puppet.” I say, “Okay. I do too.”

BC: In your career you’ve been able to work at three major music scenes in the South—Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville. Did they all have a unique flavor? What was the difference with each recording location?

Penn: Each one had its own atmosphere. Muscle Shoals was a great place to work in the early days. Wouldn’t anybody else do anything hardly except me and Spooner there for a long time. Then we moved to Memphis, and that was completely different. I got a chance to cut records up there, to produce records and that’s what I wanted to do. That’s why I moved.

Then after Martin Luther King got shot down and killed, everybody left town. Everything got so mean down there, we had to leave town too. So we came to Nashville, and Nashville is different from those two quite a bit. It’s higher in the mountains and just a little thinner than those other two places. But it’s a very creative place.

Here’s the audio of The Sweet Inspirations’ hit “Sweet Inspiration,”
which was co-written by Dan Penn.

BC: I’m still amazed that you had a hit as a teenage songwriter. Was there a certain point when you realized, you had a certain talent for songwriting?

Penn: I found out pretty quick that songs don’t grow on trees. You’ve got to work hard. And I worked and worked before I got to “I’m Your Puppet.” Early on we had some R&B cuts that kind of carried us. Then after “I’m Your Puppet,” I said…don’t look back. Just keep rocking and keep writing. And don’t worry about whether you’re a songwriter or not. That’s the way I treated it. It’s about the best way I knew, but in the beginning it was very hard to come up with a song that I liked. And it still is. I’m pretty hard to please. I don’t like a lot of my own stuff much less other people’s (laughs).

Bill Conger has been a freelance music journalist for more than 30 years, writing feature segments for shows on the former TNN and Country Music Television. He has written for various publications including Bluegrass Unlimited, Bluegrass Today, Fiddler, American Songwriter, CMT.com, GACTV.com. He can be reached at [email protected].