Dan Penn is one of the prime movers of Southern soul, the writer of such indelible classics as “Do Right Woman-Do Right Man” and “The Dark End of the Street” and a superb performer in his own right. The Alabama native recorded one of finest examples of Memphis pop, 1973’s Nobody’s Fool, on which swagger and nostalgia merge with some imaginative Bluff City-meets-Burt Bacharach arrangements. He’s a modestly impeccable singer whose versions of his own compositions might lack the grandiloquence of covers by Aretha Franklin and Esther Phillips, but whose phrasing and humor mark him as one of the genre’s great exemplars. Penn makes his home in Nashville these days and doesn’t play very many shows, so this performance with the equally gifted keyboardist and songwriter Bobby Emmons—who co-wrote “Nobody’s Fool” and many others with Penn—ought to be very special indeed.
Wed., July 22, 9 p.m., 2009
Wed., July 22, 9 p.m., 2009
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