With the success of his song "I'm Your Puppet" for James and Bobby Purify in 1966, he and Spooner Oldham wrote, Dan Penn was convinced he could make a living out of songwriting. He was right. The next year they wrote "Do Right Woman, Do Right Man" for Aretha Franklin and he produced The Box Tops hit "The Letter". The year after that he and Spooner wrote the Box Tops hit "Cry Like A Baby". This is a track from his LP "The Fame Recordings" where he sings "It Tears Me Up" (Dan Penn - Spooner Oldham).

He picked cotton, he chopped cotton, he was a hospital orderly, he worked in a chemical plant and he was a singer. Percy Sledge recorded "It Tears Me Up" and reached number twenty on the Billboard Top One Hundred and number seven on the R&B chart. This was the opening track on the 1966 album "Warm & Tender Soul". Percy had the first chart topping record produced at Alabama's Muscle Shoals studio and the first gold disc for Atlantic Records, "When A Man Loves A Woman".