Al Green

Singer

• Born: April 13, 1946
• Birthplace: Dansby, Arkansas

Singer, musician, and religious leader

A soul singer of great popularity in the 1970s, Green turned to his gospel roots in the early 1980s and became a pastor. In the 1990s he returned to the soul and rhythm-and-blues genres and he continued to record and perform in the 2000s and 2010s.

Areas of achievement: Music: gospel; Music: pop; Music: rhythm and blues; Music: soul; Religion and theology

Early Life

Al Green was born on April 13, 1946, in Dansby, Arkansas—a small town on the outskirts of Forrest City—to Robert and Cora Lee Greene. The sixth of ten children, Al Green began performing gospel music when he was nine years old with his brothers as a member of the Greene Brothers (Green dropped the “e” from his last name when he embarked on a solo career). The brothers toured the church circuits in the South and continued to perform gospel staples, such as "Mary Don’t You Weep," after the family left Arkansas and relocated to Grand Rapids, Michigan. Green’s father kicked the boy out of the family gospel group when he was caught listening to the Jackie Wilson single "A Woman, a Lover, a Friend," which the father considered "the devil’s music."

While in high school, Green formed the pop group Al Greene and the Creations with high school friends Curtis Rogers and Palmer James. The group later changed the name to Al Green and the Soul Mates, releasing a first single, “Back Up Train,” in 1967 on Hot Line Music Journal label. The song climbed to number five on the Billboard rhythm-and-blues chart. However, the group’s following releases failed to have the same impact, and they disbanded.

In late 1968, while on tour in Midland, Texas, Green crossed paths with bandleader and Hi Records co-owner Willie Mitchell. Impressed by Green’s raw talent, Mitchell signed Green to Mitchell’s Memphis-based label. Mitchell subsequently became Green’s cowriter and producer-arranger-engineer for the next eight years. The pair’s first collaboration, Green Is Blues, released in the summer of 1969, synchronized Green’s soulful and falsetto vocals with Mitchell’s production skills, introducing a distinctive percussive string and horn sound that became Green’s signature.

Life’s Work

In 1971, Green released his breakthrough album, Al Green Gets Next to You. The album contained a mixture of covers and original songs, including Green’s first gold single, “Tired of Being Alone,” and the rhythm-and-blues classic “I Can’t Get Next to You.” The following year, Green released Let’s Stay Together (1972). Cowritten with producer Mitchell and drummer-producer Al Jackson, Jr., the album’s title track became Green’s signature song and peaked at number one on the Billboard pop and rhythm-and-blues charts. Following the success of “Let’s Stay Together,” Green continued to hit the charts with songs such as “I’m Still in Love with You” (1972), “You Ought to Be with Me” (1972), “Here I Am (Come and Take Me)” (1973), and “Sha-La-La (Make Me Happy)” (1974).

In October, 1974, Green’s enraged girlfriend poured boiling grits on the singer while he was brushing his teeth in the bathroom of his Memphis home. She then turned a gun on herself, ending her life. As a result of the attack, Green was hospitalized with third-degree burns to his back. It has been reported that Green considered the incident a spiritual wake-up call, although in his autobiography, Take Me to the River (2002), Green insists that he had been "born again" almost a year before the event.

In 1976, Green and producer-cowriter Mitchell recorded Have a Good Time. However, Green had decided it was time to branch out on his own and started by purchasing his own recording studio. In early 1977, Green produced his eleventh studio album, The Belle Album, working with new musicians. That same year, he purchased the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church in Memphis and became an ordained minister. After surviving a fall from a concert stage while performing in Cincinnati in 1979, Green made the decision to leave the pop world and devote his life to his ministry. For close to ten years, Green focused solely on preaching and recording gospel music.

In 1988, Green returned to the pop charts, recording the duet“Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” with the lead singer of the Eurythmics, Annie Lennox. In the 1990s he revisited his Memphis soul roots, recording the album Don’t Look Back (1992), which was reissued in 1995 as Your Heart’s in Good Hands. That same year he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2002, Green received the prestigious Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, and the following year he reunited with Mitchell to record the album I Can’t Stop (2003). In 2008, Green released his most successful album in thirty-five years, Lay It Down, for Blue Note Records. Featuring duets with artists such as Corrine Bailey Rae and John Legend, the album reached number nine on the Billboard Top 200 album chart. He mostly stayed out of the recording studio over the next decade, but he did record a song for Amazon Music's streaming service in 2018—a recording of the Freddie Fender original "Before the Next Teardrop Falls."

Significance

The first in a new generation of African American soul singers, Green contributed to the creation of a distinctive sound, dubbed the New Memphis Sound. Extending far beyond the genre lines that separate secular from sacred, Green’s music contains a singular common denominator: his unmistakable, mournful, one-of-a-kind falsetto voice.

Bibliography

Chinen, Nate. “Al Green Pays Tribute to the Old Al Green.” The New York Times 25 May 2008. Print.

Erlewine, Stephen Thomas. "Al Green: Biography." AllMusic. AllMusic, 2016. Web. 7 Mar. 2016.

Green, Al, and Davin Seay. Take Me to the River. New York: HarperCollins, 2000. Print.

Kemp, Mark. "Al Green." Rolling Stone. Rolling Stone, 2016. Web. 7 Mar. 2016.

Mnookin, Seth. “Number 9.” The New Yorker 8 Dec. 2003. Print.