They call him the Reverend, and it is not a nickname. Al Green really is an ordained minister who preaches every Sunday at his own church in Memphis. He is also the man who made the most seductive soul music of the 1970s, a singer whose falsetto could make a love song sound like a prayer and a prayer sound like a love song. That tension between the sacred and the secular, between the bedroom and the church pew, is the whole story of Al Green. Few artists have ever embodied it so completely, and none did it with a voice that beautiful.
A Gospel Boy from Forrest City
Albert Leornes Greene was born on April 13, 1946, in Forrest City, Arkansas. Gospel was his first language: his father played bass in a traveling gospel group, the Green Brothers, and by age nine, young Al was singing alongside his brothers. When the family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, around the time he was sixteen, he discovered a second world, the secular soul of Sam Cooke and especially Jackie Wilson, the R&B powerhouse whose vocal acrobatics set young Al’s imagination on fire.
In 1964 he and some friends formed a group called the Creations, touring the Chitlin Circuit of clubs that catered to Black audiences in the South. They renamed themselves Al Green and the Soul Mates, pressed their own single, “Back Up Train,” and watched it climb to No. 5 on the R&B chart in 1968. It was a real hit, but the band around him was going nowhere. Green’s real breakthrough came by pure chance, in the last place he expected.
A Chance Meeting in Texas
In 1969, Green was performing at a club in Midland, Texas, when trumpeter and producer Willie Mitchell heard him sing. Mitchell was the vice president and chief producer of Hi Records in Memphis, Tennessee, and he heard something in Green’s voice that nobody else had quite figured out how to use. He brought the young singer to Memphis, signed him to Hi Records, and even persuaded him to drop the final “e” from his name. Albert Greene became Al Green.
Mitchell set out to reshape the sound around him. Where the Memphis of Stax/Volt was gritty and raw, Mitchell wanted something softer, more polished, more intimate. He encouraged Green to explore his falsetto and built a lush, silky sound around the Hi Rhythm Section, a band of Memphis session musicians whose steady, sensual groove became the signature of the label. The early results hinted at the magic: a 1969 cover of the Beatles’ “I Want to Hold Your Hand” that showed off Green’s astonishing vocal agility, and then a remake of the Temptations’ “I Can’t Get Next to You,” which reached No. 1 on the soul charts in 1971.
The Golden Run at Hi Records
The next five years were one of the great hot streaks in popular music. “Tired of Being Alone” (1971), written by Green himself, sold more than a million copies and reached the pop Top 20, preparing the way for the song that would define him. The story behind “Let’s Stay Together” is the stuff of legend. Mitchell had been working on a musical arrangement with drummer Al Jackson Jr., formerly of Booker T. and the MG’s, and presented the developing track to Green, who was not immediately convinced. Green wrote the lyrics in about 15 minutes, Mitchell spent over 100 hours perfecting the recording in Royal Studios, and the finished record was released as a single in late 1971. It reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 on February 12, 1972, held the top spot for a week, spent nine weeks at No. 1 on the R&B chart, and became Green’s signature song and his only pop chart-topper. It was later ranked among the greatest songs of all time and added to the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry.
The hits just kept coming: “I’m Still in Love with You” (1972), “Call Me (Come Back Home)” (1973), the earthy “Love and Happiness” (1973), “Here I Am (Come and Take Me)” (1973), and “Take Me to the River” (1974). On stage, Green was a phenomenon in his own right, a charismatic showman whose silky stage presence made him a genuine sex symbol of the era. Between 1971 and 1976, Mitchell produced six consecutive Al Green albums that all reached No. 1 on the R&B album chart, five of them certified gold or better. The Encyclopedia Britannica would later call Green “the most popular performer of soul music in the 1970s.” It is hard to argue.
The Turn Toward Heaven
Then, in 1974, came the incident that changed everything. A woman he had been seeing, Mary Woodson, scalded him with hot grits in his Memphis home in what appeared to be a jealous confrontation, and then took her own life. Green was badly burned, physically and spiritually. He began to pull away from the world of secular fame. In 1976 he was ordained as a minister, and he founded the Full Gospel Tabernacle church in Memphis. By 1980 he had devoted himself fully to his ministry and to gospel music.
It was not a retirement so much as a redirection. Green recorded gospel albums through the 1980s with genuine passion, his voice, honed on both love songs and church music, slipping naturally into hymns. A 1984 documentary, “Gospel According to Al Green,” captured him preaching and singing at his church, the same silk and fire, now aimed at heaven.
The Comeback and the Honors
Secular music never quite let go of him. Green returned to pop and soul recording in the late 1980s, and in the 2000s he won over a new generation. His 2008 album “Lay It Down,” featuring guest vocals from neo-soul stars like John Legend and Anthony Hamilton, earned him a pair of Grammy Awards. In 2018 he released a new single for the first time in nearly a decade, a cover of “Before the Next Teardrop Falls.” His memoir, “Take Me to the River,” arrived in 2000, telling the whole story in his own words.
The honors have been lavish and deserved. Green was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995 and the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2004, a rare double that says everything about his two worlds. He received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, holds 11 Grammy Awards in total, and was given a Kennedy Center Honor in 2014. He still lives in Memphis, still serves as pastor of his church, and still performs the songs that made him a legend.
There is a simple reason Al Green’s music has lasted when so much else from the era has faded. He sang about love as if it were a spiritual condition, and about faith as if it were the deepest romance. Whether he was whispering “I’m still in love with you” or preaching on a Sunday morning, the message was the same: love, real love, is sacred. The Reverend has been saying it for fifty years. We should keep listening.
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