MUSCLE Shoals, Alabama, is one of the most important, and perhaps unlikely, spots in the complex story of soul music. Its distinct musical tradition had grown in considerable isolation, in an area made up of two separate Bible Belt counties - both dry as a bone - on either side of the Tennessee River. The lack of legal drink clearly didn't do much for the club scene, but the four major towns of Florence, Tuscumbria, Sheffield and Muscle Shoals had already yielded much between them: W.C. Handy, Sam Phillips, Buddy Killen and, incidentally, more than enough members of the Ku Klux Klan.
In the 1950s, Tom Stafford, of the drugstore Staffords of Florence, decided to start a publishing company. There had been some country music publishing in Florence before, but when Fame Music started up, this altogether difficult territory was put on the musical map. A studio opened above the drugstore, and people like Spooner Oldham, Donnie Fritts and Rick Hall started hanging out writing songs. Things took a serious turn when a band called The Mark-Vs (later called the Pallbearers) backed Arthur Alexander on the Rick Hall song, You Better Move On. It was a hit, and with the royalties, Hall moved Fame studios to Muscle Shoals itself.
That back-up band had been led by Dan Penn - another of those who had been attracted by the musical spirit at Fame. He now found himself not only at the core of the house band at the new Muscle Shoals studio, but was also given a job as a writer and producer. It was a shrewd appointment. Among the many songs he would write (or co-write) are some of the best known in popular music: Do Right Woman, Dark End of the Street, I'm Your Puppet, It Tears Me Up - and songs sung by major stars such as Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding, Percy Sledge, James Carr and Elvis Presley. As a singer, Penn was described by Jerry Wexler of Atlantic Records as the most soulful white man he had ever heard. An impressive CV indeed.
Dan Penn was born in Vernon, Alabama, in 1941. He arrived at the Florence drugstore/studio as a teenager. He had a song with him called Is a Bluebird Blue? - it provided him with his first hit when it was recorded by Conway Twitty in 1960. And although Twitty turned it into a country song, Penn even at 16 knew exactly where his interests lay - the music he heard in his head was absolutely black. And he had first heard it on the radio.
"But, of course, I wasn't looking for r'n'b or black music - I was just turning the dial. I had my own little radio in my own room when I was about nine or 10 years old, and one night I found WLAC out of Nashville - John R. and all those guys. They were playing black music exclusively, and when I found that station, I said, `man I wanna stay with these guys'. It was probably Jimmy Reed, and I was hearing my first blues. And also a lot of black preachers and black spiritual singers. Then later on we got to Ray Charles and Bobby Bland. Is a Bluebird Blue? is actually a Jimmy Reed-type song. When Conway Twitty did it, it wasn't any more!"
Before that, Penn had been listening to a station in Birmingham called WBOK which played the pop music of the day: Patti Page and Hank Williams. Other musical input came from church, where he remembers being "one of those front row kids - just hollering, and my dad would have to calm me down". His father, a songleader in church, also had a front porch band, with his mother on piano and various friends playing entirely for pleasure. It was, he says, "hillbilly music all the way". And, so, given this Methodist, Bible Belt, hillbilly background, it might seem strange that he developed such an interest in black music.
"It wasn't strange to me because I just got up and played what I played. You got to remember that Elvis had already broken the mould at that point. After Elvis, almost anything was possible. I mean, people didn't say `oh Dan, he's singing that ol' black music'. They didn't do that. They were just glad to see people getting up and do whatever they wanted to do. And I was no blacker than Elvis at that point. It was Jerry Lee Lewis stuff - kinda the rebellion deal. But then I got started doing exclusively Ray Charles and Bobby Bland and James Brown and all that kinda stuff. And there were a whole lot of cats in the South doing it too because we all loved that early-1960s music. Lots of times I heard other cats that could blow me away."
PENN admits that in the early days, his music was basically imitation. His first lyrics came as he walked behind a mule and a plough, making up words to Hank Williams songs he had heard on the radio. But, as time went on, he and other writers such as Donnie Fritts and Spooner Oldham began to find their own voices. He cites Rainbow Road, which was covered by Arthur Alexander and Let's Do It Over, which Joe Simon did, as important landmarks on the road to originality. But the song which really gave them an identity was I'm Your Puppet - a hit for James and Bobby Purify. After that, they decided they were songwriters.
"I always loved the background. I love working in studios. The songs are my babies - but they're my babies even when somebody else cuts them. I'm always proud to let them go to a great singer. And it's a wonderful feeling to hear this sound coming back to you that you've been a pretty big part of. The one thing that really made us reach down and get it done was the fact that this great singer was going to sing this song - if we could get it written by Tuesday! And that was just something pushing on you - but it was a nice push. It helped to drive the tune on out."
And, so, the songs of Dan Penn were very much in demand. So, too, was Muscle Shoals, and many artists hoped to benefit from its unique sound. Even the mighty Atlantic Records showed up with Percy Sledge and Wilson Pickett in tow, and the results were spectacular. Penn's collaborations with Chips Moman yielded more major hits, and yet it all still seemed very unlikely indeed.
There are famous stories of Wilson Pickett not even wanting to get off the plane, having spotted black people picking cotton in the fields below. The South was still the South, and Alabama was very much the buckle on the Bible Belt. But, despite the many contradictions involved in the success of Muscle Shoals, those involved thought it would never end - but it did. And, according to Dan Penn, it wasn't the success of The Beatles that finished the era; it was the death of Martin Luther King.
"All the respect and the trust was gone after that. When we were in the studio, we always had the greatest respect for black singers, and they for us. And some of the white musicians and black musicians working together just made some of the best music. But that trust and respect was just killed that same day, and it took a long time before people were playing together again. Now they are, but time has moved on - it's a different day, and we don't have that sound anymore. I thought what went on then was the healthiest thing in the world - these blacks and us whites in here working together. It never occurred to me that there would ever be a problem big enough to stop it. But it was the death of Martin Luther King - in my opinion. It didn't only kill him, it killed r'n'b music."
Dann Penn and Spooner Oldham's Moments From This Theatre is out now on Proper Records