The Memphis megastar’s second release on Hi Records found its groove in the singers’ early influences.
Al Green’s hits from the early 1970s are some of the most luscious recordings ever put on wax. “Tired of Being Alone,” “Let’s Stay Together,” “Call Me (Come Back Home)” “I’m Still in Love with You,” these songs define the smoother side of seventies soul. Along with Green, Marvin Gaye and Isaac Hayes offered a lush alternative to the spirited R&B of the sixties, and also made exquisite albums built around dramatic recurring themes. It would fizzle out mid-decade when demand for dance and disco music made soul singers redefine their musical direction. Al Green’s albums for Hi Records from 1969 to 1976 are some of the finest of this period. In the liner notes for Al Green: The Hi Records Singles Collection, Robert Gordon provides an otherworldly depiction of the singer’s seventies’ recordings: “They are about love, they are about sex, they are about sweat and flesh and lips and eyeballs—and they are divine. They are so full of feel and humanity and love that they celebrate the holiness of creation and creativity.” Still, when Green joined the label in the late sixties, he had hoped to sing a different style of music than what later become his signature sound. He wanted to be more like Otis Redding than the sweet Thom Bell produced singles that had just begun dominating the airways. Things didn’t quite go as expected.
Like so many soul and R&B singers, the young Al Greene’s musical beginnings went through the church. His father and mother raised Al and his nine brothers and sisters as Baptists in Jacknash, Arkansas. The Greene’s performed gospel music in a family band that his father formed in 1953, when Al was seven. Al joined the Greene Brothers when he was old enough and his singing made him a standout in the group. But Al was also interested in Rhythm and Blues and he hid his secular records from his father, fearful if he found them, he would break them. “I loved Otis Redding and Sam Cooke for the way they could wring longing and loneliness out of every last note,” Green confessed in his autobiography Take Me to the River. “But the one who opened my ears to what real singing—not to mention style and showmanship—was all about was ‘Mr. Excitement, Mr. Delightment’ himself, Jackie Wilson.” Gospel music and R&B singers would have the greatest impact on the future superstar. It would be a bumpy road on his trip to getting there.
In the mid-fifties, his father moved the family to Grand Rapids, Michigan, leaving behind his sharecropper life in Arkansas. The Greene Brothers continued to tour and perform, but by the early sixties, Al began sneaking off to practice with his pop vocal group, the Creations. When Al’s father found out his son was singing Jackie Wilson songs, he kicked the sixteen-year-old out of the house, forcing him to stay with another group member. It would put an end to the Greene Brothers, but by 1966, the Creations has a steady gig at the El Grotto Club in Battle Creek, playing with a band that would soon earn fame as Jr. Walker & the All Stars. A year later, the renamed Al Greene and the Soul Mates recorded their first record “Back Up Train” for the small imprint Grand Land Records. Released in October 1967, the song becoming a local sensation and went to #1 in Detroit. With national distribution by Bell Records, it became a #4 R&B hit, even getting some airplay in England. An album followed in March 1968, but without a successful follow up single, the group disbanded. Al was now on his own, touring the country, playing where he could with any pickup band available to back him. At a gig in Midland, Texas, he met Willie Mitchell, a producer for Hi Records of Memphis, touring with his band to promote the label’s newest single. After hearing Al Green sing (he had since dropped the “e” from his last name), Mitchell offered the singer an opportunity to come to Memphis to make records in his studio. He also promised his young protégé that he would make him a star.
Hi Records began in South Memphis with a recording studio in a converted movie theater named Royal Studios. The label released instrumental music and had its first hit record in 1959 with “Smokie, Part 2” by Bill Black’s Combo. Willie Mitchell produced and arranged several hits for the label and after founder Joe Cuoghi passed away in 1970, Mitchell became Hi Records’ Vice President and creative head. With instrumental records falling out of favor, Mitchell began updating the label’s sound and adding singers to the records. He put more horns on the recordings and wrote string-laden backing that Green called “smooth-as-silk arrangements.” O. V. Wright, Syl Johnson and Ann Peebles all had hits on the label, the latter releasing the impeccable “I Can’t Stand the Rain.” Al Green became Hi Records best selling artist and Mitchell’s greatest work is in those recordings. Willie Mitchell shaped his new singer to fit his distinctive melodies, softening Green’s delivery and teaching him to feel the deep meaning in the song. It took a few records to get there, the two searching for the right style with the studio’s house band, a progression described by Robert Gordon as “a family learning to communicate.”
The musicians at Royal Studios provided the core of the label’s sound. Three brothers: Mabon “Teenie” Hodges on guitar, Leroy “Flick” Hodges on bass and Charles “Do-Funny” Hodges on keyboards were known as the Hi Rhythm Section, which also included drummers Howard “Bulldog” Grimes or Al Jackson Jr., when he wasn’t playing in Booker T. & the M.G.’s. Al Green and the Hi Rhythm Section recorded their first sessions in December 1968, and the songs that would become Green’s first Hi album, Green Is Blues, sound like a band looking for an answer. The record is full of short, radio friendly songs—mostly covers, with a few originals. Along with Beatles, Box Tops, and Jerry Butler tunes, Green included one of his own songs, revealing the type of music he wanted to make. “Get Back Baby” is a James Brown shouter, sung with intensity and grit. Compared to the other tracks, this one practically leaps off the record. Despite all their good intentions, singles from Green Is Blues didn’t chart and changes were necessary for the next LP. And what a makeover it is!
Al Green Gets Next to You opens with his take on The Temptations’ smash, announcing how cover songs would be handled moving forward: Green would completely own them. In this case, taking a familiar tune and turning it upside down and inside out until it’s practically unrecognizable from the original. Just compare the fiery boldness of this track with the restrained version of The Temptations’ “My Girl” on Green Is Blues. Willie Mitchell must have started listening to his new pupil because Al Green Get’s Next to You overflows with sizzling vitality and thrilling performances by Green and the band. The album is a showcase for the Hodges brothers, but it’s Teenie’s guitar that’s the real star of the rhythm section. Green is a remade artist in more than just his vocals. The cover photo drops the stuffy suit and serious expression on the first record for a modish Al Green with the intoxicating smile he would grace on future album art. He’s never this funky on so many songs on a single album, and after “I Can’t Get Next to You” became a hit, he probably assumed he’d found his niche. But another track overshadowed them all and after “Tired of Being Alone” became a million seller, there would be no turning back. “Let’s Stay Together” arrived next and after it went to #1, Green and Mitchell had discovered their magic formula.
Green would include uptempo numbers in future albums—“It Ain’t No Fun To Me” on Let’s Stay Together is a tasty slice of Memphis soul—but the lush ballads of love, loss and loneliness would define Al Green’s tenure at Royal Studios. And, of course, there’s “Love and Happiness” from the I’m Still in Love with You album—five-plus minutes of stomping, sweltering bliss. Too lengthy to be released as a single in the U.S. in 1972, it has become one of Green’s most-streamed songs, right behind “Let’s Stay Together.” Al Green Gets Next to You also includes a cover of The Soul Stirrers’ “God Is Standing By,” foretelling the singer’s eventual move to gospel recordings in 1980. Mitchell had told Green “I don’t do gospel music,” yet religious themes are found in all the albums they made for Hi Records. Of the ten studio LPs Green recorded at Royal Studios, Al Green Gets Next to You captures the most of all his influences. It may be the truest recording of what he’s all about.