The days and nights of recording were also making Oldham a subtly accomplished sideman. The Fame band, like the Stax house band in Memphis, was famous for its ensemble approach to recording; this was very different from the way Atlantic created R&B records in New York, where jazz-seasoned musicians played written arrangements. By contrast, the southern players created head arrangements on the inspirational fly.
For example, when Wexler brought Aretha Franklin to Muscle Shoals, Oldham was hired to play acoustic piano, but when he heard Franklin’s gospel-styled accompaniment to “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)”, he instinctively moved to an electric instrument. A few minutes later, he came up with the distinctive lick — Penn calls it “the three-fingered dumb hum” — that kicked off one of the most memorable records of the soul era.
Oldham’s early session work was also highlighted by a late 1964 session for perhaps the most popular soul ballad of all time, Percy Sledge’s “When a Man Loves A Woman”. “Percy’s at his first recording session,” remembers Oldham, “and he’s singing his heart out. And I was having my first experience with this shiny red Farfisa organ that had a multi-tone booster that sounded like a thousand bumble bees, and another setting that had the nice, smooth sound that I settled on.”
Penn was anxious to produce records, and after the success of “I’m Your Puppet”, he moved to Memphis to work with guitarist/producer Lincoln Wayne “Chips” Moman at American Studios. Penn had met Moman when he’d come to Muscle Shoals to play on a Wilson Pickett session, and the two strong-willed music men became all but inseparable. They collaborated on a total of six tunes, four of which are long forgotten (including a couple composed with Oldham and another two with Moman’s frequent writing partner, Bobby Gene Emmons). By contrast, the two credited just to Penn/Moman — “The Dark End Of The Street” and “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” — are unforgettable.
The circumstances behind the composition of these modern standards are almost absurdly off-the-cuff. “The Dark End Of The Street” was written when Penn and Moman, who got the nickname “Chips” because of his love for playing poker, took a break from a card game. “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” was composed after Moman’s wife served a particularly delicious dinner of quail. The song became the B-side to Aretha Franklin’s “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)”, with Penn writing the tune’s bridge during Franklin’s one-day session in Muscle Shoals.
Franklin is also among the many who covered “The Dark End Of The Street”, including the Flying Burrito Brothers (who also recorded “Do Right Woman”). The most unusual version was cut by Clarence Carter, who tacked a single verse to the end of a soulful recitation titled “Making Love At The Dark End Of The Street”. Not long ago, Penn nearly fell off his chair when he heard Garrison Keillor treat the song like a Lutheran hymn on “A Prairie Home Companion”.
Penn finally got his chance to produce when Moman passed along a local rock group called the Box Tops featuring a 17-year-old singer named Alex Chilton. Penn chose a song called “The Letter” that he’d found on a Wayne Carson demo tape, and added the noise of a jet plane to the fade. Moman hated the sound effect and, according to Penn, was scarcely seen around the studio for the four weeks that “The Letter” was #1.
Success put pressure on Penn to prove his production debut wasn’t a fluke. He begged his old friend Spooner to come to Memphis and help him write a hit. They spent long, late nights getting nowhere until, just hours before the session, they gave up, locked the studio, and went across the street to a cafe called Porky’s.
“So we’re sitting in this booth staring at each other,” says Penn, “and Spooner puts his head down on the table and says, ‘I could cry like a baby.’ I said, ‘What did you say?'” They stayed up all night writing, but according to Penn, were “fresh as daisies” when the musicians arrived in the morning. After all, they had their song.
There’s a poignant irony about the success of the Box Tops, for the blue-eyed soul singing that Penn coaxed out of the young Chilton flew up the charts, whereas Penn’s own stabs at recording went nowhere. Over the years, Penn had released a handful of singles under his own name and such handles as Lonnie Ray, Danny Lee, and Brother Lee Love. Nothing clicked, and by the time Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, the easygoing, cross-racial scene that had nurtured the era of southern soul was as dead as King’s dream. (Penn finally released an album in 1972 called Nobody’s Fool, but it received little notice or acclaim.)
Oldham split for Los Angeles in September 1969 and was introduced around town by his friend Chris Ethridge, who played bass in the Flying Burrito Brothers. He quickly found himself recording with such emerging Southern California talents as Linda Ronstadt and Jackson Browne.
“You have friends who have friends,” says Oldham in a voice that’s as laid-back as his keyboard style, “and word spreads if they like what you do.” Word spread to, among many others, Bob Dylan, Bob Seger, Maria Muldaur, the Everly Brothers, Roger McGuinn, Willie DeVille, J.J. Cale, and John Prine, not to mention Liberace. More recently, he added keyboards to the Drive-By Truckers’ 2003 disc Decoration Day at the request of Patterson Hood, the son of Fame bassist David Hood. Oldham, who played on Neil Young’s acoustic-oriented albums including 1978’s Comes A Time, 1992’s Harvest Moon and the new Prairie Wind, will be seen in the concert film Jonathan Demme shot of Young performing his new album at Ryman Auditorium.
