It Tears Me Up, Percy Sledge (1966)

Recently, the children of the late Jerry Wexler, the legendary Atlantic Records producer and coiner of the term "rhythm and blues" when he worked at Billboard, put on a memorial concert in New York to coincide with the festivities surrounding the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary concert.  

One of the performers at the event was keyboardist Spooner Oldham who, along with the virtuoso songwriter Dan Penn, wrote the definitive, the most raw, anthem to love's anguish, It Tears Me Up.  Drenched in pain, the song is a portrait of someone quite simply reeling from betrayal.  Many have sung it but the great Percy Sledge was its first interpreter.  

Wexler was probably the single reason we even knew about Sledge.  Wanting to establish a recording base in the Deep South for Atlantic, Wexler decided to distribute Sledge's signature song, When A Man Loves A Woman, at a pivotal time in Atlantic's A&R evolution.  It became a sensation.  (My prior post on that story is here.)

After that, Wexler began to send more and more artists to Muscle Shoals, Alabama, to record. Oldham was one of the session musicians working there, which gave rise to hit after hit.  Said Sledge in Gerri Hirshey's Nowhere To Run, "What drew everybody to Muscle Shoals ... well, it sits right at the bottom of the mountains. ... When you got mountains standing that high up over you, all the way around for, like, fifty, sixty miles, then you've got a bass track."  

The partnership of Penn and Oldham was one of the most fertile out of that southern crucible, that also included Memphis.  Penn, who once said, "I can't tell where Spooner stops and I begin when we write a song," is a gigantic (and, I feel, unsung) talent - a man through whose songs every emotion no one wants to feel can be experienced.  A Woman Left Lonely, I'm Your Puppet, Out of Left Field and Cry Like A Baby were other songs the two co-wrote, and Penn has written many, many more that everyone recognizes with numerous other collaborators. 

More recently, Penn took on a new project,  producing western soul men the Hacienda Brothers, based out of Tucson.  I have never heard a more heartwrenching or redefining version of It Tears Me Up, bolstered particularly through its use of pedal steel guitar where horns were in the original version. You could be the happiest person alive and you'll want to slit your throat after hearing it.  Find their 2007 album What's Wrong With Right and prepare to suffer.

A Woman Left Lonely, Janis Joplin (1971)

Managing expectations - This post is going to be more about the co-writer of this song (with Spooner Oldham), the almost unbearably-talented Dan Penn, than it will be about the singer.

Since I started this blog, I've been trying to determine which of Janis' songs best showcased her ability to unleash her unbridled pain. I keep coming back to A Woman Left Lonely. And now I know why. Dan Penn - singer, songwriter and producer extraordinaire - wrote it.

Those who don't know Penn need to rectify that situation, as he is still alive and kicking. Among the insanely sublime songs he wrote for others:

Don't Give Up on Me (with Carson Whitsett and Hoy Lindsey) for Solomon Burke
I'm Your Puppet (with Spooner Oldham) for James & Bobby Purify
The Dark End of the Street (with Chips Moman) for James Carr (but Penn singing his own masterpiece trumps it, in my opinion - don't listen to this on a day when you're not pretty strong - it could kill you)
Do Right Woman, Do Right Man (with Spooner Oldham) for Aretha Franklin
Cry Like A Baby (again with Spooner Oldham) for the Boxtops; he also produced but didn't compose The Letter
Is A Bluebird Blue? (at the age of 15!) for Conway Twitty

I'll stop now. I'm afraid I'll find even more. The man's output is staggering.

A native of Vernon, Alabama, Penn is one of a handful of white musicians who was lucky enough (his characterization) to work side by side with black musicians to create some of the most significant soul music of our time. Working out of the crucibles of Muscle Shoals, Memphis and Nashville (where he still lives), Penn time and time again has excavated primal emotions and unfurled them in ballads that approximate perfection.

It's hard to say from whence his talent for working across color lines comes. Fresh Air's Terry Gross tried, in an interview with Penn in 2001, to get at the magic formula, but like most artists, he couldn't really articulate his gift. He did say, however, that after Martin Luther King was assassinated, the peaceful co-existence of black and white artists in the studio all but evaporated, something I've heard Stax' Steve Cropper say as well. One of many side tragedies emanating from the original one.

Penn does perform on his own and with Spooner Oldham upon occasion, has released several recordings (Nobody's Fool and Do Right Man are two) and continues to produce - most recently, the Tucson-based Hacienda Brothers. If he appeared anywhere within a hundred mile radius of me right now, I'd be there in a minute.