And the Welcome everybody to Soda Jerker on songwriting. We hope you're all in good health. This is Simon, accompanied

as always by my trusty co-host Brian, and joining us for episode 191 is an American songwriter,

singer, musician and record producer who's listed among Rolling Stone magazine's 100 greatest

songwriters of all time. He's co-architect of countless soul classics and his songs have been

recorded by the likes of Otis Redding, Aretha Franklin, Jerry

Lee Lewis, Percy Sledge, Dolly Parton, Barbara Streisand, Linda Ronstadt and

many more. In late 2020 he released Living on Mercy, his first solo album in 26 years and only his third ever,

but you can't rush these things. Recorded in the legendary Muscle Show Studios and in Nashville, Tennessee,

from where he joined us over Zoom towards the end of last year.

We are honored to welcome the great Dan Penn to the show.

Our guest was born Wallace Daniel Pennington in 1941 in Maloy, Lamar County, Alabama.

He developed as ear for music through his father, who was a song leader in church and played guitar and his mother, a pianist.

As a teenager, he became enamored with singers like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy

Orbison and Jean Vincent, as well as Gospel and Blues singers like Ray Charles, Bobby Bland and Clyde

McFatter and in the evenings would listen religiously to Nashville Radio Station W-L-A-C.

Dan picked up the guitar around the age of 16 and was soon playing local dancers and the

college fraternity circuit in Mississippi and Alabama with bands like Benny Kegel and the Rhythm Swingsters, the

Nomads and Dan Penn and the Paul Bearers. Dan wrote his first hit is a Blue Bird Blue

for Conway Twitty while still in high school and with that as his calling

card settled in Florence, Alabama where he met songwriters Tom Stafford and Arthur

Alexander who became his mentors.

Dan eventually became the first house songwriter at Rick Hall's fledgling fame studios where he further developed his writing and studio skills.

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