Background

Al Green, born Albert Leornes Greene, was born on April 13, 1946, in Forest City, Arkansas, United States. He was the sixth child born to Robert G. and Cora Lee Green. Al was raised in a devoutly religious family. At age 12 Green moved with his family to Grand Rapids, Michigan, a city about 180 miles west of Detroit.

Education

Al began performing at a young age, singing gospel music with his family as part of the Greene Brothers. Even after the Greene family moved to Michigan, the Greene Brothers continued touring on the gospel circuit. Al was kicked out of the family home for listening to the secular music of Jackie Wilson.

Career

In 1967 at the age of 16, Al Green formed an R&B group, Al Green & the Creations, with several of his high-school friends. Two Creation members, Curtis Rogers and Palmer James founded their own independent record company, Hot Line Music Journal, and had the group record for the label. By that time, the Creations had been re-named the Soul Mates. The group's first single, "Back Up Train," became a surprise hit, climbing to number five on the R&B charts early in 1968. The Soul Mates attempted to record another hit, but all of their subsequent singles failed to find an audience. In 1969, Al Green met bandleader and Hi Records vice president Willie Mitchell while on tour in Midland, Texas. Impressed with Green's voice, he signed the singer to Hi Records and began collaborating with Al on his debut album

He was perhaps the ideal complement to the orchestral, syrupy, strong soul production work of Hi Records wizard Willie Mitchell, who also helmed 70s classics for Syl Johnson, Ann Peebles, and himself.

Deeply shaken, Green continued to reaffirm and grow closer to his deeply held love for God and became an ordained pastor of the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis in 1976.

Continuing to record R&B, Green saw his sales start to slip and drew mixed reviews from critics. 1977's The Belle Album was critically acclaimed but did not regain his former mass audience. In 1979 Green injured himself falling off the stage while performing in Cincinnati and interpreted this as a message from God. He then concentrated his energies towards pastoring his church and gospel singing, also appearing in 1982 with Patti Labelle in the Broadway musical Your Arms Too Short to Box with God. According to Glide Magazine, "by the late 70s, he had begun concentrating almost exclusively on gospel music." His first gospel album was "The Lord Will Make a Way." From 1981 to 1989 Green recorded a series of gospel recordings, garnering eight "soul gospel performance" Grammys in that period. In 1985, he reunited with Willie Mitchell along with Angelo Earl for "He Is the Light," his first album for A&M Records. In 1984, director Robert Mugge released a documentary film, "Gospel According to Al Green," including interviews about his life and footage from his church. In 1989, Green released "I Get Joy," again with producer/guitarist Angelo Earl. In 2001, he appeared in the movie and soundtrack of On the Line featuring Lance Bass.

After spending several years exclusively performing gospel, Green began to return to Rhythm & Blues. First, he released a duet with Annie Lennox, "Put a Little Love in Your Heart" for Scrooged, a 1988 Bill Murray film. In 1989 Green worked with producer Arthur Baker writing and producing the international hit "The Message Is Love." In 1991 he created the introductory theme song for the short-lived television series Good Sports featuring Ryan O'Neal and Farrah Fawcett. In 1992, Green recorded again with Baker, "the Fine Young Cannibals," and reunited with his former Memphis mix engineer (this time functioning as producer) Terry Manning, to release the album "Don't Look Back." His 1994 duet with country music singer Lyle Lovett blended country with R&B, garnering him his ninth Grammy, this time in a pop music category. Green's first secular album in some time was "Your Heart's In Good Hands" (1995), released to positive reviews but disappointing sales, the same year Green was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In 2000, Green published "Take Me to the River," a book discussing his career. Green received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002.

In 2001, Green's live cover of Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" was released on the soundtrack to Will Smith's film Ali.

By 2003 Green released a non-religious (secular) album entitled "I Can't Stop," his first collaboration with Willie Mitchell since 1985's "He is the Light." In March 2005 he issued "Everything's OK" as the follow-up to "I Can't Stop." Green also collaborated with Mitchell on this secular CD.

Al Green's latest album "Lay It Down" released in May 2008. Conceived as a collaboration between the soul legend and a handful of gifted young admirers from the worlds of contemporary R&B and hip hop, the album was drawn from a series of inspired sessions that yielded the most high-spirited, funky and often lushly romantic songs of Green's latter-day career.

In 2018 he released a new single for the first time in nearly 10 years, a cover of "Before the Next Teardrop Falls."

In 2019, Al Green announced his first tour in seven years. Green performed in Austin, Houston and Irving in Texas, as well as in Atlanta, Georgia, and at the 50th anniversary of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.

Achievements

• 

  Al Green is an American Grammy award-winning soul and gospel singer who enjoyed great popularity in the 70s with hit singles such as "Let's Stay Together", Tired of Being Alone", and "You Oughta Be With Me." Green has boasted a voice capable of both fluid high streams of sugar and deep south growls and rasps.
  
  He has sold over 20 million records worldwide, and he was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, being referred to as "one of the most gifted purveyors of soul music." He won 11 Grammy Awards, including Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002. Green received a BET Lifetime Achievement Award in 2008. In 2014 he received a Kennedy Center Honor. The musician was named on Rolling Stone magazine's "100 Greatest Artists of All Time" list.
  
  

Works

More photos

• book

  • Take Me to the River

    (Alone among the greatest vocalists and songwriters in Ame...)

    2000

• music

  • Back Up Train 1967
  • Green Is Blues 1969
  • Gets Next to You 1971
  • Let's Stay Together 1972
  • I'm Still in Love with You 1972
  • Call Me 1973
  • Livin' for You 1973
  • Al Green Explores Your Mind 1974
  • Al Green Is Love 1975
  • Full of Fire 1976
  • Have a Good Time 1976
  • The Belle Album 1977
  • Truth N' Time 1978
  • The Lord Will Make a Way 1980
  • Higher Plane 1982
  • Precious Lord 1982
  • I'll Rise Again 1983
  • White Christmas 1983
  • Trust in God 1984
  • He Is The Light 1985
  • Soul Survivor 1987
  • I Get Joy 1989
  • From My Soul 1990
  • Love Is Reality 1992
  • Don't Look Back 1993
  • Your Heart's in Good Hands 1995
  • I Can't Stop 2003
  • Everything's Ok 2005
  • Lay It Down 2008

Religion

Al Green was born as a Christian. He was ordained as Reverend of the Tabernacle of Pentecostalism. Consequently, religion became the most important thing in his life, but without abandoning his fondness of singing.

Green continued touring and releasing music much as he had previously, though he did leave audience members taken aback by occasionally pausing to sermonize during performances. But after he was almost killed, Green devoted himself to his faith. When Green had healed, he bought a church, the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis, and began leading services there. In addition to becoming a pastor, Green turned back toward spiritual music.

Views

Al Green, the ultimate anti-Brown, was a hyper-romantic artist who put the little Memphis label Hi Records on the map the same way Otis Redding did for Stax, and he was also a highly personable and private explorer of the somewhat softer side of the soul, in his lush music if not his life. He was also hyper-stylized and almost androgynous, the same way Prince would sometimes appear to be later in the century they oddly shared.

Quotations: "I learned more stuff in church than I did in the world."

"Teach success before teaching responsibility. Teach them to believe in themselves. Teach them to think, 'I'm not stupid'. No child wants to fail. Everyone wants to succeed."

"If I could live my life all over I'd do everything the same; the film in my camera would remain the same; there's no way lord, to leave this love behind."

"I have found people on both sides of the aisle, white and black, that'll give you the shirt off their back. And I've also found people that won't give you a piece of bread if you're starving to death."

"The music is the message, the message is the music. So that's my little ministry that the Big Man upstairs gave to me - a little ministry called love and happiness."

"There's a lot of churches that hide their dirty laundry under the rug, and I know about that from being in the church 27 years. Oh, yeah."

"Some people believe that fairness comes with obeying the rules. I'm one of those people."

"People still come up to me and ask me to sign their records. That's right, records! Man, they don't even make records no more!"

"Suicide is not an answer, it's destruction."

Personality

In October 1974, Green brought home two women he had been seeing: his sometimes girlfriend Mary Woodson, and a stewardess named Carlotta Williams. It turned tragic when Woodson poured boiling grits she was making on him, inflicting second-degree burns to the singer. As Williams tended him, Woodson killed herself with his gun.

Interests

• Music & Bands

  R&B, Sam Cooke, Elvis Presley, Jackie Wilson

Connections

In 1977 Al Green married Shirley Kyles. The couple had three daughters together, namely Alva, Rubi and Kora and two sons named Trevor and Al Jr. Shirley filed for divorce in 1983, citing irreconcilable differences and domestic violence.

Father:

Robert G. Green

Mother:

Cora Lee Green

Sister:

Maxine Eve Green

Daughter:

Alva Green

Daughter:

Rubi Green

Daughter:

Kora Green

Son:

Trevor Green

Son:

Al Green Jr.

Friend:

Diana Ross

colleague:

Jackie Wilson

colleague:

Lyle Lovett

Friend:

Curtis Rogers

Friend:

Palmer James

colleague:

Willie Mitchell

colleague:

Annie Lennox

colleague:

Al Jackson

Drummer Al Jackson, of Booker T. & the MG's fame, played with Al Green several times and even co-wrote some of his material.

colleague:

Aretha Franklin

colleague:

Justin Timberlake

References

• Al Green - Amazon Music
• Soul Survivor: A Biography of Al Green
  2017
• Al Green - Facebook