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:

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."

Notes from a roadtrip through America's musical heartland

I recently completed a one-month roadtrip through the South, focused (for the most part) on learning more about (and writing about) the history of soul, blues, rock and country in the area. The theory is that fusing my travel writing - where I already have a toe-hold in the industry -with music writing will provide me with clips to help break in more fully on the music side of things. We shall see...

In any case, here are a few items published over at World Hum as I went:

Jackson On My Mind - About my preparations for the trip, and trying to figure out which "Jackson town" was the one Johnny and June sing about.

No James Brown Museum in Augusta? Get Up Offa That Thing! - Self-explanatory, no?

Do Right Woman: 'Worth the 160-Mile Detour From Nashville' - On seeing Dan Penn's original 'Do Right' lyrics at the Alabama Music Hall of Fame.

Burning, Burning, Burning and Nothing Can Cool Me? - Sadly, the "hunk a burning tenders" at the Heartbreak Hotel weren't actually that spicy.