Covered: Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham, Volume 2: 1968-2023

Here's the second and final album of the Covered series for the songwriting team of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham.

In the first volume, I noted that Penn and Oldham had a lot of success writing hit songs from about 1966 to 1968, while based in Memphis, Tennessee. The first song here is from 1968. But after that, there was a sharp drop with their musical successes. Penn later claimed that there was a lot of fruitful collaboration between white songwriters like Spooner and him and the black singers they were mainly writing for during that time period, but that changed as the years went on. He saw the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968 as a key moment. After that, race became more of an issue, and the expectation grew that soul music songs sung by black singers would be written by black songwriters too.

Due to this changed environment, Penn and Oldham split up. Oldham moved to Los Angeles, where he found a lot of success playing keyboards as a session musician. That continued for decades, with him playing on albums by the likes of Bob Dylan, Neil Young, Aretha Franklin, Jackson Browne, the Everly Brothers, J.J. Cale, Linda Ronstadt, and many, many more. 

Meanwhile, Penn moved to Nashville, the home of country music, and tried to find success writing country songs. However, although his style had always been an interesting combination of soul and country music, he didn't do well writing just  for country singers. In 1973, he finally released his first solo album, "Nobody's Fool." While it was critically acclaimed, it sold very little. He did have some success as a songwriter and/or producer, but in a low-key way.

In 1994, Penn and Oldham reunited for Penn's second solo album, "Do Right Man." This mostly consisted of Penn's versions of his biggest hits from the 1960s. It was critically acclaimed. And while it also wasn't a big seller, it generated enough interest for Penn and Oldham to essentially start a new career as duo, going on tour to promote the occasional new album by Penn. Since then, Penn has released three more studio albums. The two of them have built up a following. As I write this in 2025, they are still going on tour, despite the fact that they're both in their early eighties.

Penn continues to write new songs, though it seems not often with Oldham anymore. He's had the occasional successful late career song. For instance, "Don't Give Up on Me" was the title track to Solomon Burke's acclaimed 2002 album by that same name. And "Memphis Women and Chicken" from Penn's 1994 album is usually performed in the concerts by Penn and Oldham.

Most of the songs here were written by Penn with others instead of Oldham. However, "Lonely Women Make Good Lovers" was written by Oldham without Penn. Unlike the hit-filled Volume 1, there really aren't any big hits here, though arguably some could be considered classics, and the songwriting is still at a consistently high level. Some of the songs were written much earlier than when the versions here were recorded. For instance, "Keep On Talking," recorded by Texas in 2023, was first released by someone else in 1965. In cases like that, these are the versions I like best.

This album is 45 minutes long.

01 I Met Her in Church (Box Tops)
02 A Woman Left Lonely (Janis Joplin)
03 Rainbow Road (Percy Sledge)
04 Lonely Women Make Good Lovers (Bob Luman)
05 Zero Willpower (Irma Thomas)
06 Like a Road Leading Home (Jerry Garcia Band)
07 Where There's a Will [There's a Way] (Dan Penn)
08 Time I Took a Holiday (Nick Lowe)
09 Don't Give Up on Me (Solomon Burke)
10 Memphis Women and Chicken (Gary Nicholson)
11 I Hate You (Nicki Bluhm)
12 Keep On Talking (Texas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/9MFesvnn

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/ImNWdOz5yf5WAU7/file

I don't know what year the cover photo is from. But I did find this photo of the two of them together, probably in the 1990s. I used Photoshop to move them closer together.

Covered: Dan Penn & Spooner Oldham, Volume 1: 1960-1968

If you don't know of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham, you should. The allmusic.com website says, "Dan Penn is one of the major figures in soul music, composing many of the genre's standards," and he co-wrote most of those songs with Spooner Oldham. So this songwriting duo is the subject of the next albums in my "Covered" series highlighting great songwriters. I've found enough for two albums. Here's the first one.

Dan Penn has been the main figure in this duo, with Spooner Oldham playing a supportive role. Penn was born in 1941 in rural Alabama. He co-wrote his first hit in 1960, "Is a Blue Bird Blue" by Conway Twitty, while he was still in high school. However, after that, he struggled in the music business for a few years. Penn (who is still alive and performing as I write this in 2025) has an excellent, soulful voice. However, he wasn't able to find success as a performer.

But in the early 1960s, he began collaborating with Oldham, after the two of them were in an early band together. The earliest song here co-written by them is "Strangest Feeling," written in 1963. Oldham was also born in rural Alabama, two years after Penn. The two of them became very involved with writing, recording, and producing songs in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, especially at the FAME studio there. 

Things changed drastically for Penn and Oldham in 1966, when they co-wrote the song "I'm Your Puppet." The version by James and Bobby Purify was a big hit. When the royalty checks started coming in, Penn decided he could make a living just from songwriting. So he put his struggling career as a performer on the backburner. However, he usually made demos of the songs he wrote, and they often rivaled or even surpassed the hit versions. (A couple albums of these demos would be released decades later.)

Penn both wrote lyrics and music for his songs. However, aside from his first hit "Is a Blue Bird Blue," he almost never wrote a song by himself. He said he liked the instant feedback of songwriting collaboration. Most of his hits were co-written with Oldham (while Oldham only had one hit without him, "Lonely Women Make Good Lovers"). But he wrote with many others, and had some big hits with them. For instance, he only briefly wrote with Chips Moman in 1967, before they decided they clashed too much. But during that time, they co-wrote two of the greatest soul songs of all time, "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" and "The Dark End of the Street."

1966 to 1968 was a particularly productive time for Penn and Oldham. If you look at the below song list, they wrote one classic song after another. 

I found an interview with singer-songwriter Elvis Costello in which he expressed his admiration for Penn and Oldham. I wrote down a bit of what he said: "They wrote this extraordinary group of songs, and they made no acknowledgement of all the road signs that people erect to try to separate music. You can't really tell where the country and the soul and the rock and roll and the gospel stops and begins."

Costello further praised Penn's singing ability. "Dan is one of the greatest singers American pop music has ever created. Dan Penn is Elvis Presley if he had better taste. Dan Penn is every bit as good a singer as Elvis Presley and some, 'cos he has humility and restraint." I've included one song sung by Penn here, "Strangest Feeling," and another one on Volume 2. Hopefully that can give you a sense of his singing talent.

All the songs here are the original hit versions, in rough chronological order. Only a couple weren't at least minor hits at the time, most especially "Strangest Feeling," which was one of those demos I mentioned above that weren't released until decades later. 

Here's the Wikipedia page for Dan Penn:

Dan Penn - Wikipedia 

And here's the one for Spooner Oldham:

Spooner Oldham - Wikipedia 

This album is 43 minutes long. 

01 Is a Blue Bird Blue (Conway Twitty)
02 Strangest Feeling (Dan Penn)
03 I'm Living Good (Ovations)
04 I'm Your Puppet (James & Bobby Purify)
05 It Tears Me Up (Percy Sledge)
06 You Left the Water Running (Otis Redding)
07 I Can't Stop [No, No, No] (Arthur Conley)
08 Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (Aretha Franklin)
09 Out of Left Field (Percy Sledge)
10 The Dark End of the Street (James Carr)
11 Happy Times (Box Tops)
12 Nine Pound Steel (Joe Simon)
13 Cry like a Baby (Box Tops)
14 Sweet Inspiration (Sweet Inspirations)
15 I Worship the Ground You Walk On (Etta James)
16 Everything I Am (Plastic Penny)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/uRC6i55G

alternates:

https://bestfile.io/en/MT0xwo5fFZ371pP/file

The cover image is taken from a photo of a band called the Pallbearers, from around 1964. Both Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham were members. So, using Photoshop, I cut on their parts of the photo and rearranged them so their heads were close together. Also, it was black and white photo, but I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program.

Oldham is on the left in the grey jacket. Penn is on the right with the black jacket.