R.I.P. Jerry Wexler

It's been a sad week for soul fans.

First Isaac Hayes passed away, and now comes the news that Atlantic Records giant Jerry Wexler has died at 91.

You can take your pick of Wexler's accomplishments: he reportedly coined the term 'rhythm and blues', presided over key phases in the careers of Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett and others, brought Dusty Springfield to town to record 'Dusty in Memphis', and was a major player in bringing the Stax and Muscle Shoals sounds to the wider world.

Oh, and for any non-soul fans out there: he also signed Led Zeppelin to Atlantic, and worked with Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and more.

Here are a couple of crucial Wexler-related clips.

One of Ray Charles' earliest hits at Atlantic, 'I Got A Woman':



'I Never Loved A Man' was one of two tracks produced when Wex brought Aretha to FAME for the infamous Muscle Shoals session:



Word has it that Wexler once said he wanted only two words inscribed on his tombstone: "More bass." Rest in peace, Jerry.

The Dan Penn Files: Do Right Woman

As I wrote awhile back in this World Hum blog post, one of the best parts of my visit to Muscle Shoals was the songwriters' corner at the Alabama Music Hall of Fame. There, I had the chance to see Dan Penn's original scribblings of the lyrics to 'Do Right Woman, Do Right Man' while listening to Aretha Franklin belt it out on a vintage jukebox. Classic, right?

Here's Penn's own version of arguably his most famous song:

Soul Soundtracks: The Commitments

This 1991 release, about a soul cover band in Dublin, offers not just a great soul movie soundtrack - it is a great soul album, full stop. The band draws heavily from the Southern soul tradition, covering Otis Redding, Clarence Carter, Wilson Pickett, James Carr, Aretha's two tracks from the infamous Muscle Shoals session, and more.

Call it blasphemy if you like, but sometimes I have trouble deciding which I like better: the originals, or the covers by The Commitments.

Here's Mustang Sally:

The Muscle Shoals Scene

This afternoon I'm wrestling with a travel story about my recent trip to Muscle Shoals, Alabama. It's hard for me to explain the excitement of visiting a place that's simultaneously so important and so irrelevant. The Shoals, after all, is an unattractive backwater - but that's precisely what makes what happened there at Fame with Dan Penn, Donnie Fritts, Spooner Oldham and all the rest so compelling.

Here's a fantastic bit from Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music, summing up the Muscle Shoals scene:

"What you had was half a dozen enormously talented twenty-year-olds thrust upon the world stage while stranded in the backwoods of Alabama. They were too hip for their environment but too comfortable in it ever to want to break out. Dan was still storming around the countryside with the Fame rhythm section in a hearse, now billed as Dan Penn and the Pallbearers. Donnie Fritts, who had already moved to Nashville part-time to pursue an independent career as a songwriter ("I was the only one not to sign with Rick. Rick signed everybody who could write a fucking poem."), maintained an apartment in Florence that was affectionately known as Funk City and was painted black. There were names for everyone: Guy Bingo and Gene Audit, Mr. and Mrs. Weenie, and Sky High (that was Donnie), and when squares showed up on the scene, it was Ozzie and Harriet time. Donnie and Spooner and Dan hung out together constantly, referring to themselves without blinking as "a bunch of niggers."

Clarence Carter - Patches

Sure, it's no Slip Away. It's gimmicky and cheesy, and maybe it's as much melodrama as soul. But this track never fails to make me sing along.

"Patches, I'm depending on you, son, to pull the family through..."

The Dan Penn Files: Is A Bluebird Blue?

Dan Penn is one of my favourite characters in the soul story. As Fame's Rick Hall told Peter Guralnick in Sweet Soul Music: "Here was this kid, white, sixteen years old, singing like Ray Charles, just in love with black music. He was the real thing. He wasn't a rip-off or a fake. He knew more about black music than the rest of us put together." When Penn showed up in at Hall's fledgling studio in Muscle Shoals, he brought a song he'd written with him: "Is a bluebird blue?" which later became a hit for Conway Twitty.