Monday, February 26, 2007

Al Green

Al Green's voice has got everything you could want from a male soul singer. The classic soul sound is built on songs about loneliness, temptation, love, lust and God.

Ideally the song has to actually sound like those subjects and if the singer appears to be living the life according to the soul script....then it just sounds better to my ears.

Al Green certainly does. On his breakthrough single So Tired Of Being Alone there’s the sound of desperation, but also the sound of a Man With Plans for exactly how it’s going to be when he’s not alone anymore

You can hear it in the way that his voice slides up to a falsetto for the “Oh Baby” and then slides back to the half spoken “I’m tired of being alone here by myself”.

But his voice sounds so tense it’s as if he can barely talk. If you listen very carefully, under the peerless superglued together bass, drum and guitar chug; under the swell of the Memphis Horns you can just about hear the swish of falling underwear.

The ten or so albums released during his early 70s secular peak, before he went Gospel, triggered a knicker elastic crisis under the Bible Belt. And like his life, the albums reflected that mix of sexuality and spirituality, a lot of covers and a very distinctive sound.

Al Greene was born in Arkansas, the son of a share cropper. He was kicked out of the family gospel group, which he’d been performing with since the age of 9 after his deeply religious dad caught him listening to Jackie Wilson.

His first group Al Greene and the Soul Mates had an R & B hit in 1967 with Back Up Train, which was how he first came to the attention of producer Willie Mitchell. There is a school of thought that puts the first Al Green (he’d lost the “e” by now) album, Green Is Blue released in 1969, as essentially him finding his feet. I disagree.

The opening track One Woman is as great a piece of cheatin’ soul as you’ll hear. It’s the tale of meeting his lover as “One woman’s making me happy while the other woman’s making my home.”

It’s got guilt, resignation and helplessness at his situation. It’s got the vocal that moves between the sung to the semi spoken. The album also establishes the pattern of using a lot of covers (the first lp includes My Girl and The Letter) although, over the years the lp’s would contain some stinky floaters amongst the polished soul jewels. Take special care to avoid Light My Fire....it could sink ships!

1971’s Al Green Gets Next To You was the album with So Tired Of Being Alone.

There is a fantastic clip of him performing it on Soul Train.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDXFXXud41Q&eurl=http%3A%2F%2F


You first see the furry pimp hat... the camera manages to ease a path through the dancers, and yes Al Green is wearing a vest (actually more of a pink camisole really) and thick gold chain.

Another set of flailing dancer’s limbs appear, it’s tricky to focus, but yes Al Green is definitely wearing knee length floppy topped suede boots....and black vinyl hot pants.....Oh and a purple shoulder bag. There’s some great hammy and literal choreography going on as he really does fold his arms to sing the line “Sometimes I fold my arms I say mmmah”

The sound of those Willie Mitchell produced 70’s lps is fantastic and utterly distinctive. The drums sound like they’re tuned flat and the hi hat sits high up in the mix. The bass is treacly, Teenie Hodges guitar is woody and the little horn stabs and organ drips all just knit together into one groove. There’s no superfluous playing...ever.

The hit singles like Lets Stay Together (and just how many ex lovers claim that as Our Tune?) and Lets Get Married (“I’m tired of messing around”) Call Me, Here I Am (Come and take me) and L.O.V.E are just timeless records that people can believe in, both in the singer and in their own circumstances. Which is what Pop Music is for. Right Kids?

After 10 albums (often 2 a year) the formula was starting to wear thin though. The Belle album released in 1977 wasn’t produced by Mitchell but the title track has got a key lyric to Al Greens state of mind. “It you that I want but it’s him that I need”.

What was happening in his personal life was pushing him towards the Church and Gospel. He’d been badly burned in 1974 when his girlfriend burst into the bathroom and poured hot grits over him before shooting herself. Soul Man attacked with Soul Food.

It’s a shocking and bizarre incident...and right up there with Soul Man shockers such as Teddy Pendergrass’s transvestite car crash and Marvin Gaye’s stint of living in a camper van in Belgium before being shot dead by his dad.

In 1976 Green had opened his church in Memphis The Full Gospel Tabernacle, where he still preaches as an ordained minister; and then in 1979 he injured himself falling off stage. He took that as a message from God to move fully into Gospel music. It was effectively a second and very successful career for him as he hit a gospel boom as The Rev Al Green.

There were some secular releases such as Put A Little Love In Your Heart with Annie Lennox in 1988 and The Message Is Love with Arthur Baker in 1989. In 1993 he released Love Is Beautiful Thing which is not only a great song in its own right but also has a spoken intro line “This is what I believe”. Now that is exactly the kind of phrase I want to hear from Al Green.

In 2004 he reunited with Willie Mitchell and many of the original Memphis musicians to record the return to form album I Can’t Stop on Blue Note.

There’s some really good You Tube footage of a performance from 2005 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JAv_6CYj_U

The band sound great, he can still sing but that big bunch of red roses he’s holding onto could show that he’s keeping his career options open....if the singing doesn’t work out son, there’s always flower selling.

I also remember him doing an utterly absorbing but harrowing version of How Do You Mend A Broken Heart on Jools Holland’s show 3 or 4 years ago. So the omens are good and the NIA show could be money well spent. And however it turns out....he’s still Al Green.

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