Al Green

With all due respect to Ray Charles,Otis Redding, Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye, Al Green is the greatest soul singer of all time.  We love those other guys and we recognize their greatness,  Al Green match the funky grooves of Otis Redding with the smooth vocals of Sam Cooke and Marvin Gaye.  Al Green first hit the scene with his 1966 Soul Mates hit "Back-up train", was top of the soul world in the 70's, committed his life and skills to God in the late 70's and continues to preach and amaze today.

Al Green was born in Forest City, Arkansas, where he formed a gospel quartet, the Green Brothers, at the age of nine. The group toured throughout the South in the mid- '50s, before the family relocated to Grand Rapids, Michigan. The Green Brothers continued to perform in Grand Rapids, but Al's father kicked the boy out of the group after he caught his son listening to Jackie Wilson. At the age of 16, Al Green formed an R&B group, Al Green & the Creations, with several of his high-school friends.  The Creations re-named themselves the Soul Mates in 1966. Their first single, "Back Up Train," became a surprise hit, climbing to number five on the R&B charts early in 1968.

In 1968Al Green performed at a club in Midland, Texas, backed by Memphis bandleader and trumpeter Willie Mitchell. Impressed with Al Greens talent, Mitchell, a part-time talent scout and producer for Hi Records in Memphis, invited the young singer to record on the label with the promise that he could make Green a star in little over a year. About six months later, Al Green arrived in Memphis.  As Arnold Shaw explained in Black Popular Music, "Together, Al Green and Willie Mitchell sought to forge a style that combined the pop-soul of Detroit's Motown with the down home soul of Memphis' Stax [label], aiming for a black-white synthesis that blended black soul with white pop."

In the studio Mitchell assembled a stellar line-up of back-up musicians to perform behind Al Green—musicians that included the family team of guitarist Teenie Hodges, organist Charles Hodges, and bassist Leroy Hodges, as well as veteran membersof Booker T. and The MG's and Stax studio drummer Al Jackson Jr. The music formula put forth by Mitchell and Green proved an outstanding combination. As music writer Peter Guralnick wrote in Sweet Soul Music, "Willie Mitchell and Al Green came up with an old idea phrased in a new way, the last eccentric refinement of Sam Cooke's lyrical gospel-edged style as filtered through the fractured vocal approach of Otis Redding and the peculiarly fragmented vision of Al Green himself."

n 1968 the Green-Mitchell collaboration released a cover of the Beatles' "I Want Hold Your Hand" and a commercially unsuccessful rendition of the Hayes-Porter ballad "One Woman." Not until Al Green recorded a remake of the Temptations' hit "I Can't Get Next to You" did Green establish himself as pop singing star. For Al Green's next single "Tired of Being Alone," Mitchell sought a more subtle sound in Green's voice. "We started working, trying to get him to sing softer," explained Mitchell, as quoted in the Chicago Tribune, "We started coming up with jazz chords—retty music on top and heavy on the bottom. And it just clicked." Accompanied by Teenie Hodges' relaxed and tasteful guitar work, "Tired of Being Alone" emerged as Al Green's first smash hit.

Released in early 1970, Al Green's debut album Green Is Blues showcased the signature sound he and Mitchell devised -- a sinewy, sexy groove highlighted by horn punctuations and string beds that let Green showcase his remarkable falsetto. While the album didn't spawn any hit singles, it was well-received and set the stage for the breakthrough success of his second album. Al Green Gets Next to You (1970) included, "Tired of Being Alone," which began a streak of four straight gold singles.

Let's Stay Together (1972) was Al Green's first genuine hit album, climbing to number eight on the pop charts; its title track became his first number one single. I'm Still in Love With You, which followed only a few months later, was an even greater success, peaking at number four and launching the hits "Look What You Done for Me" and "I'm Still in Love With You."

By the release of 1973's Call Me,Al Green was known as both a hitmaker and an artist who released consistently engaging, frequently excellent, critically-acclaimed albums. His hits continued uninterrupted through the next two years, with "Call Me," "Here I Am," and "Sha-La-La (Make Me Happy)" all becoming Top Ten gold singles.

At the height of his popularity,Al Green's former girlfriend, Mary Woodson, broke into his Memphis home in October 1974 and poured boiling grits on the singer as he was bathing, inflicting second-degree burns on his back, stomach and arm; after assaulting Green, she killed herself with his gun. Green interpreted the violent incident as a sign from God that he should enter the ministry.

By 1976, Al Green had bought a church in Memphis and had become an ordained pastor of the Full Gospel Tabernacle. Though he had begun to seriously pursue religion, Al Green had not given up singing R&B. After recovering from the physical and emotional affects of the much-publicized incident with his former girlfriend, Al Green recorded the 1976 LP Full Of Fire for the Hi label.

In 1977 Green, expressing increasing interest in recording gospel music, parted company with Mitchell and without the line-up of the Hi rhythm section recorded the critically acclaimed LP The Belle Album, an intimate record exorcising the demons of his incident with Mary Woodson.  The Belle Album was critically acclaimed but failed to win a crossover audience.  The Belle Album was noted for Green's playing of acoustic and electric guitar and inventive sound techniques.

In 1978 Al Green cut Truth N' Time, an LP that included the gospel songs "Blow Me Down" and "King of All" and a religious treatment of Burt Bacharach's "Say a Little Prayer for Me."

During a concert in Cincinnati in 1979, Green fell off the stage and nearly injured himself seriously. Interpreting the accident as a sign from God, Green retired from performing secular music and devoted himself to preaching.

A new religious direction led Al Green to a modern gospel recording career. Green's voice is in fine form on the albums Higher Plane (1981) and Precious Lord (1982).  In 1982 Al Green also starred in the stage production Your Arms Too Short to Box with God with Patti LaBelle. He signed with A&M Records in 1985 and recorded three albums for the label, including the 1987 release Soul Survivor. In live performance Al Green continued to awe audiences.

In the New York Times Jon Pareles captured Al Green's on-stage energy in a review of the singers' performance at New York's Radio City in August of 1987: "He would bring a song down to a whisper; he'd break into his clear, agile falsetto, or show off by walking away from the microphone as he sang, projecting his unassisted voice well past the first 20 rows.… Green shifted continually between control and abandon; he skipped and strutted, made faces, stood with seemingly limp arms and then broke into preacherly gesticulations. By the final song he was jumping into the air at musical peaks."

Al Green's 1989 A&M album I Get Joy contained the lead track "You're Everything to Me."  Green's 1991 release, One In a Million, for the Word/Epic label was followed by the LP Love is Reality, a religious-based blend of uptempo numbers immersed in synth-pop and funk rhythms.

By 1993 Al Green began to once again record secular material, and in the following year appeared in the music film Rhythm, Country, and Blues, a tribute to the musical cultures of Memphis and Nashville. The film's soundtrack, produced by Don Was, featured a number of musical performances by R&B and country stars, including a duet byAl Green and Lyle Lovett of "(Ain't it Funny) How Time Slips Away." For his 1995 release for MCA Records, Your Heart's in Good Hands, Al Green was backed by the legendary Memphis Horns.

By the late 1990s,Al Green had overcome diminishing record sales and was enjoying a surge of fan interest. His song "Take to Me the River" had become, as a result of a 1980s cover by the Talking Heads, his most famous composition; his 1970s hit "Let's Stay Together" attracted renewed interest when it was featured in the film soundtrack to the 1994 film Pulp Fiction. His career received another boost in 1999 when he made a quest appearance on the popular television series Ally McBeal, singing his 1972 song "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart."

In 2003, Al Green worked with his old companion, Willie Mitchell, at his old studio, Hi Records, on the release of I Can't Stop. On this well-reviewed album, Al Green successfully returned to the sound that made him famous in the 1970s on such tracks as "I Can't Stop" and "Not Tonight. "One and a half years later, he followed it with Everything's OK. His third Blue Note album, 2008's Lay It Down, featured an updated sound that still echoed the feel of his classic earlier soul style. In 2010 MCA released Love Ritual, a collection of rare and unreleased tracks from Al Green's most prolific period of 1968 to 1976

n 2004, Al Green was inducted into the Gospel Music Association's Gospel Music Hall of Fame. Also in 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him #65 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted Green in 1995, referring to him as "one of the most gifted purveyors of soul music."

Justin Timberlake, once said of Al Green "people are born to do certain things, and Al Green was born to make us smile."

Listen to Christian Music Artist Al Green