Penn’s spent a lifetime behind the scenes

If he had chosen to be strictly a performer, Dan Penn could easily have become one of the all-time great pure soul singers.

But almost immediately from the time he became a professional, the lure of writing and producing proved much stronger than being in front of the microphone. Since 1960, he’s penned an amazing array of classic hits and produced a host of legendary sessions.

Today, while still continuing to produce artists and write songs from his home studio in Nashville, Dan Penn remains far more interested in what he calls “staying in the background” rather than being a featured artist.

“I guess ever since I really got my first look at the equipment and got involved with engineering and production, that’s been my first love, along with writing,” Penn said. “I did start out as a singer and played in a lot of bands in my early days, but once I got my first hit as a writer, and later when I got in the studio, it just seemed more attractive to me to work with other artists rather than trying to do that much for myself.”

Of course, when you’re barely 20 years old and Conway Twitty has a national hit with your composition “Is A Bluebird Blue,” it makes sense to focus on writing. Penn soon had another pop smash with “I’m Your Puppet,” the biggest crossover song the duo of James and Bobby Purify ever enjoyed.

Penn grew up in Vernon, Ala. and spent his teens and early 20s in the Quad Cities/Muscle Shoals area, becoming a familiar name at the historic FAME studios in Muscle Shoals. Penn relocated to Memphis in 1966. He teamed for a short but historic time with Chips Moman at American studios, and their first collaboration “Dark End Of the Street” became a soul standard.

“That song actually wasn’t necessarily written with James Carr in mind,” Penn remembered. “It just so happened that it was his turn and of course he did a fantastic job with it.” Carr was the first in a long line of great vocalists to cut that number.

Others include everyone from Linda Rondstadt to the duo of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, plus a host of other soul and R&B performers. Penn and Moman later collaborated on “Do Right Woman,” which became a staple for Aretha Franklin.

He also became part of the production crew Penn says over the decades there have been times when he’s written songs with people in mind and other times when that hasn’t been the case.

“A lot of times I’ve sat down with demos and tried to get a feel of someone’s work and voice, their mannerisms and if possible, get some inspiration out of the demo,” Penn said. “Then you try and fashion something different from what you’ve heard. You don’t want to be overly affected by the demo or necessarily be guided by it. There are songs like “Out Of Left Field” and “It Tears Me Up” for Percy Sledge where I did specifically write with his voice in mind.

“The key is trying to find something that will work with the voice. There have been times when I’ve tried to write songs for artists and it didn’t happen. The songwriting process is something that you can’t force. It has to feel natural, or you won’t come up with something that really sounds good.”

The extensive list of Penn tunes that he either wrote or did in conjunction with longtime friend and musical cohort Spooner Oldham are still played almost every hour somewhere on an oldies station. He and Oldham’s “Cry Like A Baby” was the Box Tops second huge pop smash, and Penn wrote and produced their first hit “The Letter.”

Throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, Penn’s chart tunes included “Sweet Inspiration” (Sweet Inspirations), “Take Me Just As I Am” (Solomon Burke), “In The Same Old Way” (Bobby Bare), “Let’s Do It Over” (Joe Simon) and “Up Tight Good Man” (Laura Lee). Penn continued that success into the ‘70s, with Bobby Womack, Barbara Streisand, Charlie Rich, as well as Sledge, again scoring with his tunes.

At the same time Penn was producing many of these sessions, and even had his own critically acclaimed release Nobody’s Fool in 1972.

Penn says he’s always had a basic rule about producing that he learned back during his days in Memphis and also at Fame.

“There are two ways you can approach producing a session,” Penn said. “There’s the dictatorial way, where you insist on people playing things exactly like they sound on a demo or a record, and then there’s the way where you let the musicians figure things out and then you work with them. I’ve always felt that the musicians could find things in a song a lot better than someone trying to insist on them playing it a certain way. Now if it turns out later that they can’t, then you step in, but that’s something I’ve usually been able to avoid.”

Today Penn’s nearly as active as he was during the heyday of soul. He’s recently produced recordings for Greg Trooper and Donnie Fritts, and also produced his own new CD Junkyard junkie on his label Dandy Records. It includes many current Penn tunes, plus an exuberant new version of “Is A Bluebird Blue.”

While he utilizes computer technology in his production and engineering work, Penn deems himself “old school” when it comes to the current downloading craze, something he acknowledges he didn’t anticipate.

“The whole downloading thing is something I really never saw coming,” Penn said. “I guess I’m kind of an old fashioned person in that for me, I like to have everything. The artwork, the musicians playing on the session, liner notes, all those are part of the whole music experience. This business of buying one song, the hit of the moment, then later you erase it and record another, is something that’s not really my thing. It’s part of the whole disposable attitude in this society.”

He says when he travels, he finds a bit of the past is still alive and well.

“You go over to Europe, and they’re still really collecting not only CDs but vinyl as well,” Penn said. “There are people in America as well who are doing it also, but I see more of it in Europe. I guess it’s a thing where the people who really love music still want the full experience.”

Having recently completed and now remixing and mastering a new CD for vocalist Julian Dawson, Penn will be doing a rare live date Wednesday night as part of Tin Pan South. He’s joining Donnie Fritts, Gary Nicholson and Lee Roy Parnell in a set at the Mercy Lounge (6:30 p.m., One Cannery Row, $15, 251-3020).

“I still very much enjoy writing and producing,” Penn said in conclusion. “I also continue making demos, because to me that’s where you hear the real vocals. Sometimes the demos are better than the records that come from them, because you get all the other stuff on top of them. When you’re hearing the demo, you’re really hearing what the singer has to say and you can tell whether they’ve got the talent or not, and how they really feel and express themselves.”