Sunday, March 10, 2013

Southern soul songwriter Dan Penn revisits past with new record, return to Memphis

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2013/feb/26/southern-soul-songwriter-dan-penn-revisits-past/

Southern soul songwriter Dan Penn revisits past with new record, return to Memph_2013-03-10_09-13-59

From the site:

Back in the mid-1960s, Dan Penn was what you’d call an all-nighter. A workaholic, a musical obsessive, he spent his wee hours at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Ala., doing what he did best: wrestling songs to the ground.

Fueled by copious amounts of coffee, cigarettes and speed, and buoyed by a burning passion for R&B, Penn — usually with his writing partner and pianist Spooner Oldham in tow — would come to shape Southern soul music during those late nights.

“I had a big passion for what I was doing,” says the 71-year-old Penn. “We’d start in the evening, fooling around, looking for an idea or a groove. Then we’d write and cut till 2, 3, 4 in the morning; sometimes we’d stay there till sun came up. We were young and had a lot of energy then but that seems like another lifetime ago.”

No comments:

Post a Comment