Albert Leornes Greene (born April 13, 1946), also known as Al Green, is an African American singer, songwriter and record producer, best known for recording a series of soul hit singles in the early 1970s, including “Take Me to the River“, “Tired of Being Alone“, “I’m Still in Love with You“, “Love and Happiness“, and his signature song, “Let’s Stay Together“. Inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, Green was referred to on the museum’s site as being “one of the most gifted purveyors of soul music”. He has also been referred to as “The Last of the Great Soul Singers”.
Al began performing with his brothers in a group called the Greene Brothers at around the age of ten. The Greene family relocated to Grand Rapids, Michigan, in the late 1950s. Al was kicked out of the family home while in his teens, after his devoutly religious father caught him listening to Jackie Wilson.
“I also listened to Mahalia Jackson, all the great gospel singers. But the most important music to me was those hip-shakin’ boys: Wilson Pickett and Elvis Presley. I just loved Elvis Presley. Whatever he got, I went out and bought.”
Those who knew Green during his formative years in Grand Rapids could have told you long ago that the ambitious young man from Arkansas definitely had what it takes to be a pop star. What wasn’t as clear was whether his upbringing in the church would stick through the wild distractions of fame.
He’s seen plenty of the latter, including a girlfriend’s much-publicized assault and suicide in 1974. But the fact that the Rev. Green today preaches from the pulpit of his Memphis church, while still wailing the R&B hits that get people dancing, gratifies those who knew him when.
The Word of God was a key part of Green’s upbringing. Beginning at age 9 he sang in a family gospel quartet, the Greene Brothers, in his hometown of Forrest City, Ark. The group continued to perform with Green’s father, Robert, after the family moved to Grand Rapids in the mid-1950s.
It was in this gritty northern city that young Al lost his innocence but found his passion for singing. There began the battle for what Green describes in his autobiography as “the no-man’s-land in my soul, separating the sacred and profane.”
In “Take Me to the River,” Green recalls his first impressions of Grand Rapids as a dirty, smelly city. It brought tears to his eyes with the memory of Arkansas’ pine forests and hardened his heart with a “mean and vindictive streak.” Beaten up by a bully at Franklin Elementary School, the next day he conked the kid with a Coke bottle to establish his don’t-mess-with-me identity.
But it was also at Franklin where he found his voice, singing to himself before class one day only to find a crowd listening to him in the doorway. With help from a kind choir director, he found his joy.
“The music transported me, and the sound of my own singing was another kind of power,” he writes. “Up on that stage, raising my voice to the rafters … was a way of marking my place in the world, of standing firm and proclaiming loud and clear, ‘My name is Al Greene, (cq) and I am somebody!’“
Besides singing at Gospel Temple, he sang at revivals with Mother Bates, matriarch of the storefront House of Prayer, who taught him about caring for the poor and loving one’s enemy.
But this was the Sixties, and the lure of rock and roll and soul singers like Jackie Wilson made church seem boring by comparison. The glamor of “bright lights and beautiful women” temporarily took over the no-man’s land, and his father kicked Al out of his gospel group.
Rev. Jones says Green told him at one point, “ ‘Deacon Jones, I’m going out and make a million, and then I’m coming back to Christianity.’ I said I’d be praying for him till he gets back.”
More than 20 million gospel and pop records later, the Rev. Green has long been back in church but still sings with soul — God and the devil dueling it out in one incredible voice.
Green was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. In 2004, he was inducted into the Gospel Music Association‘s Gospel Music Hall of Fame. That same year, he was inducted into The Songwriters Hall of Fame. Also in 2004, Rolling Stone magazine ranked him No. 65 on their list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. He was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2009 BET Awards on June 24, 2009.
On August 26, 2004, Green was honored as a BMI Icon at the annual BMI Urban Awards. He joined a list of previous Icon honorees that included R&B legends James Brown, Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Bo Diddley.
Green was recognized on December 7, 2014, as a Kennedy Center Honors recipient.
Sources:
Al Green : Michigan Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Charley Honey, “Al Green’s Grand Rapids’ upbringing made him part preacher, part soul singer, and all joy“, MLive, June 19, 2012.