Aretha Franklin’s songwriter Dan Penn on “the best record she ever made”
The 1960s were an exciting time for music as what has always been entirely subjective (the success of a song) started to develop a formula. Some writers knew what made a hit, and they could apply that to any piece of music they were presented with to create something unique but with mass appeal. Dan Penn was good at this; some songs he worked on with Aretha Franklin, Janis Joplin, and The Box Tops were instant classics.
Given he had so much control over his songwriting ability, it’s interesting to hear that one of his favourite Aretha Franklin songs was initially left half-finished on the cutting room floor. In the middle of a songwriting session, after an argument broke out, the track was almost abandoned. Penn didn’t know what to make of the song, and its future hung in the balance.
Penn and Chips Moman wrote ‘Do Right Woman, Do Right Man’, which is a gospel-infused plea that men respect their female partners. Shortly after recording the track ‘I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)’, Franklin started recording ‘Do Right Woman’ at FAME Studios in Alabama. Many people were in attendance, so tensions started to rise when the song wasn’t coming together as well as they thought it should. An argument erupted between Ted White (Franklin’s husband), trumpeter Ken Laxton and FAME boss Rick Hall.
Franklin and White stormed out of the studios and didn’t return. The version of the song left was incomplete, without any real sense of direction. Rather than focus on the argument, Penn kept working, eventually developing something partway formed.
“I didn’t think we had anything,” said Penn, “I had sung the pilot vocal; it was real high for me, but I had to sing it with the band to get them through it. There wasn’t much going on – a little drum lick, a little bass lick. (Aretha) didn’t know the song; she wasn’t ready to apply herself. And before I knew it, they pulled her out of there, and the session was over.”
A few weeks passed, and the song wasn’t touched until Franklin resurfaced at Atlantic Studios in New York and was shown what Penn had put together. She brought her sisters, Carolyn, Erma, and Cissy Houston, to help with backing vocals while she provided the lead. When Penn heard the song’s final version, he couldn’t quite believe it.
Penn said: “Later on, they called the band to come up to New York, so I went up too. Jerry Wexler said, ‘Dan – you come with me,’ so we went to the Atlantic control room, and they played me the finished ‘Do Right Woman’… with Aretha and her sisters and all that. It knocked me down! To me, it’s the best record she ever made, so I was real happy.”
It is unclear whether Penn’s reaction to the song was because of how he genuinely felt or because the last time he heard it, it was just his pilot vocals and not the Queen of Soul leading lyrics. However, it shows that sometimes a good song can come even when it feels as though it might have slipped the writer’s grasp.
