Al Green - Let's Stay Together
- 9 years ago
Al Green is one of Arkansas’s best-known singers, with a career that has ranged from rhythm and blues (R&B) to pop to gospel and a combination. Green’s distinctive falsetto singing style continues to thrill fans old and young, and he remains an active soul singer from an era that also produced Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, and Marvin Gaye.
Al Greene (he later dropped the last “e”) was born on April 13, 1946, in Forrest City (St. Francis County) and grew up in a large family that sang gospel music. When his sharecropper father moved the family to Grand Rapids, Michigan, Green was only nine but sang with his siblings in the Green Brothers. When he began listening to the non-gospel sounds of Jackie Wilson, Green’s father dismissed him from the group. He was sixteen.
Green was later recruited by a local band, the Creations, later renamed Al Green and the Soul Mates, and in 1967, they recorded a single, “Back Up Train,” which hit No. 5 on the R&B charts. After a couple of years of struggling, Green was in a Midland, Texas, club in 1969 when he met Willie Mitchell, a Memphis, Tennessee, bandleader and an executive with that city’s soul record label, Hi Records. Mitchell persuaded Green to move to Memphis and let Mitchell shape his career and sound.
Green’s first chart hit, “Tired of Being Alone,” reached No. 11 in 1971. It was followed at the end of that year by his only No. 1 hit, “Let’s Stay Together.” He had six other Top 10 hits, all released between 1972 and 1974.
Fame and fortune followed, but Green suffered a couple of infamous career-changing moments. A former girlfriend entered Green’s home while he was bathing, poured a pot of boiling grits on him, then used his gun to kill herself. The 1974 incident resulted in second-degree burns on Green’s stomach, arm, and back. Two years later, he bought a church, paying for the building using a blank piece of paper as a check.
The church, the Full Gospel Tabernacle, is on Hale Road in Memphis, not far from Elvis Presley’s famous residence, Graceland. Green was ordained the pastor of his church, but it was another three years before he gave up his pop music career; he fell off an Ohio stage in 1979 and viewed the incident as a message from God.
Green then began recording and performing gospel music exclusively and has earned eight Grammy Awards in the gospel genre. Although his 1980s albums were devoid of pop sounds, he did a 1982 stint on Broadway with Patti LaBelle in a gospel musical, Your Arms Too Short to Box with God, and he recorded a duet with Annie Lennox (then one-half of Eurythmics), “Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” on the soundtrack of the 1988 Christmas movie Scrooged.
Al Greene (he later dropped the last “e”) was born on April 13, 1946, in Forrest City (St. Francis County) and grew up in a large family that sang gospel music. When his sharecropper father moved the family to Grand Rapids, Michigan, Green was only nine but sang with his siblings in the Green Brothers. When he began listening to the non-gospel sounds of Jackie Wilson, Green’s father dismissed him from the group. He was sixteen.
Green was later recruited by a local band, the Creations, later renamed Al Green and the Soul Mates, and in 1967, they recorded a single, “Back Up Train,” which hit No. 5 on the R&B charts. After a couple of years of struggling, Green was in a Midland, Texas, club in 1969 when he met Willie Mitchell, a Memphis, Tennessee, bandleader and an executive with that city’s soul record label, Hi Records. Mitchell persuaded Green to move to Memphis and let Mitchell shape his career and sound.
Green’s first chart hit, “Tired of Being Alone,” reached No. 11 in 1971. It was followed at the end of that year by his only No. 1 hit, “Let’s Stay Together.” He had six other Top 10 hits, all released between 1972 and 1974.
Fame and fortune followed, but Green suffered a couple of infamous career-changing moments. A former girlfriend entered Green’s home while he was bathing, poured a pot of boiling grits on him, then used his gun to kill herself. The 1974 incident resulted in second-degree burns on Green’s stomach, arm, and back. Two years later, he bought a church, paying for the building using a blank piece of paper as a check.
The church, the Full Gospel Tabernacle, is on Hale Road in Memphis, not far from Elvis Presley’s famous residence, Graceland. Green was ordained the pastor of his church, but it was another three years before he gave up his pop music career; he fell off an Ohio stage in 1979 and viewed the incident as a message from God.
Green then began recording and performing gospel music exclusively and has earned eight Grammy Awards in the gospel genre. Although his 1980s albums were devoid of pop sounds, he did a 1982 stint on Broadway with Patti LaBelle in a gospel musical, Your Arms Too Short to Box with God, and he recorded a duet with Annie Lennox (then one-half of Eurythmics), “Put a Little Love in Your Heart,” on the soundtrack of the 1988 Christmas movie Scrooged.