Dan Penn - Nobody's Fool

2016 reissue

Nobody’s Fool is Dan Penn’s first solo album, recorded after already cementing his legacy throughout the late 60s as a top-tier songwriter and producer. The album, released on Bell Records in 1973, is masterfully produced, boasting arrangements textured with strings, horns, and back-up vocalists. By the time Penn started building his own studio in 1970, where he would soon write and record Nobody’s Fool, he had already accomplished considerable success. In 1967, he produced The Box Tops #1 hit single “The Letter,” while also co-writing their follow up hits. Also that same year, he co-wrote two of the greatest southern soul songs of all time: “The Dark End of the Street” recorded by James Carr, and “Do Right Woman, Do Right Man” recorded by Aretha Franklin..

These earlier successes allowed Penn the freedom to create Nobody’s Fool, an album that’s sound combines blue-eyed southern soul and country music. The record went largely unnoticed at the time of its release, but has since become an essential album for both critics and fans alike, and thus highly sought after on the collector’s market.

This limited edition CD reissue of Dan Penn’s highly influential debut, remastered by Mark Wilder at Battery Studios and housed in a Stoughton old style tip-on gatefold CD jacket, is the definitive reissue of this album.