Road Leading Home: Songs By Dan Penn / Various

The songwriting skills of Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham have already been celebrated in fine style on Ace's award-winning Sweet Inspiration compilation - a highlight of our Songwriter Series, and still available on CDCHD 1284. Spooner was not Dan's sole collaborator during his most prolific years as a songwriter. Our follow up to Sweet Inspiration shines its spotlight on great songs that Dan has written with other notable writers, plus one or two he wrote on his own.

A Road Leading Home covers almost 50 years of Dan's songwriting, from his first ever hit, Is A Blue Bird Blue (written when Dan was 14) to What's Wrong With Right, a 21st century Penn copyright essayed by the Hacienda Brothers. The CD features a number of Dan's best known songs, including such Penn perennials as Rainbow Road, Do Right Woman - Do Right Man and the immortal Dark End Of The Street. As with every entry in the songwriter series, A Road Leading Home also features some lesser known (but no less good) recordings of songs from Dan's golden era, several of which appear here on CD for the first time.

Beautifully mastered and with a now de rigueur booklet crammed full of rare label shots and illustrations, this is sure to appear to everyone who has purchased any of Ace's Dan Penn or Fame-related projects.