washerman's dog: Al Green

Showing posts with label Al Green. Show all posts

Friday, April 13, 2012

Happy 66th Birthday: Al Green

Al Green

For a year in the early 1970s I lived in a trailer in a small Bible Belt town in the bluegrass country of rural Kentucky. I attended the county high school and most of my classmates were either white trailer-living trash (like myself) or poor black kids. If I recollect right, our county was the poorest performer in education in the State.

My musical tastes in those days centered around Cat Stevens, Bread, America and the Allman Brothers Band. I had an English friend who was into Gary Glitter and David Bowie and the Stones but all that seemed a bit too weird for me. Another close friend had every Pink Floyd album and something called Tubular Bells. He was so avant garde! But I did get a taste for War from him so that was good.

In French class I sat in front of a black kid named Robert. He and I chatted in the hall sometimes and he loved a jean jacket I had with a big red question mark sewn on the back. He kept pestering me to give it to him. I resisted but in the end gave in and he wore it every day for a few weeks and then gave it back to me. One day he asked it I knew Al. I said, ‘Who?”

‘Al,’ he said, ‘Al Green, man, Al Green.’

I confessed I didn’t know such a guy and Robert giggled at me as if had said the earth was flat. ‘He’s the best singer in the world, man. Check him out, he be on TV you know.’

Some time later I was watching a show hosted by the band Chicago. The special guest was a black soul singer named Al Green. He sang Let’s Stay Together and Judy. I was mesmerized and have been ever since. I’ve seen him live a couple of times and have plenty of his records. He never ceases to amaze. And tonight he is 66 years old! Happy Birthday Al baby!

Love you!

I’ve put together a selection of some prime cuts from this genius of soul in honor of the day. But before that here are some things Al told Esquire magazine he has learned throughout his life.

A prostitute is a poor thing to put confidence in.

There was ten of us, five boys and five girls, and Mom and Dad made twelve people in one house, a little two-bedroom. Daddy couldn't buy everybody shoes at one time, so somebody's getting hand-me-downs. That's me.

I didn't have a mother; I had a mama. I measure other women by the stature of my mama.

Daddy used to go to the honky-tonk bars and leave me in the truck. After a while, he'd come out staggering and slurring, "Now, don't you tell your mama what I did, boy." He was so drunk, I wouldn't have to say anything.

Everything is handed to society now. Before, you had to dig for it. I like that -- digging for it.

What if she takes your heart and wraps it around her little finger and has you going to the store, shopping, washing clothes, and then she breaks your heart? That's the chance you've got to take on love.

I was at a neighbor's house when I was about thirteen. People brought them something wrapped tight in paper, something to do with some spoon. Everybody was laughing; they'd go in sad and come out happy. So one of the guys said, "Hey, let li'l Green have some. He's a nice kid." So he got this syringe ready, and I said, "I don't know, I'm scared of needles. I can't do that," and I ran out of the house. They all fell out laughing.

I was a fantastic womanizer. I mean, I was incredible. I just didn't know what I was doing. I had women all over the place, they were all over me, and my dad said, "Well, why don't you just choose one?"

I don't know what bad music is if it's done right, but then again, I don't know what good music is if it's done wrong.

A man's gift makes room for him.

Blacks have based their feelings on "What happened to me, being a slave on the plantation, da da da," and that's fine and dandy. But I could go to my friend Henry, who's Jewish, and say, "What happened to you?" And he'd say, "My grandparents died in the Holocaust." So that stuff happened to everybody.

Look at you. The chains you had on. Now they're gold.

You can't sleep all day and get up at 4:00 in the evening and pretend you're in a hurry.

The trick to achieving a good falsetto? I know no way to accomplish that. I don't even know how I sing like I sing.

Church is so important for black people because it's the only place we had to go when we couldn't go no place else. Couldn't go to the bar -- wasn't allowed. Couldn't go to the hotel because we weren't able to rent a room. Couldn't go to the restaurant because we weren't allowed to be seated. So we went to church.

If there wasn't a hell, nobody could tell me to go there.

Seeing that I ain't never died, I can't be afraid of something I never did.

I woke up about 4:30 in the morning. Something was happening. I was knocking on doors of the hotel, telling complete strangers I'd been born again. Some lady slammed the door in my face. I went to the next door and said, "I been born again!" They called security.

I think God chose to speak to me because I'm softhearted and he knew that I would be dumb enough to actually try.

My daddy said, "When the sun comes up, boy, you get up. When the sun go down, dammit, you go down."

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.

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

You'll find that there's somebody along the way who will give you a ride wherever you want to go.

I saw a tree standing that wouldn't sway with the wind. It stayed still. But one day a hurricane came and ripped it.

The woman had water or something in this pot. I said, "Mary, you gonna heat water or something?" She said, "I would never hurt you. I love you." I said, "Hurt me!! I just wrote a song for you!" That's the furthest thing from my mind. I go back downstairs, I disrobe, I'm washing my face, and I feel this excruciating pain, and water or something flies all over the place. I get in the shower, cold water, and I'm screaming, and the next thing I hear is a shot fired and someone hit the floor. I loved her. I thought we could be together forever. She didn't mean it. I didn't know she had a problem.

Suicide is not an answer, it's destruction.

If I fast for forty days, I can go more places sitting right here on this couch than you could go in a jet plane.

The greatest thing that ever happened to me, to Al Green, the little boy from Arkansas, was that amidst all the doubts and speculation, I found peace.

(http://www.esquire.com/features/what-ive-learned/al-green-0901)

Track Listing:

01 Belle

02 Call Me (Come Back Home)

03 Stand Up

04 Lay It Down (Feat. Anthony Hamilton)

05 Tired Of Being Alone

06 I Can't Stop

07 Let's Stay Together

08 Judy

09 Waiting On You

10 I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry

11 All 'N All

12 I Feel Good

13 How Can You Mend A Broken Heart

14 Dream

15 Love and Happiness

16 I've Been Thinking About You

17 For The Good Times

18 People Get Ready

19 His Name Is Jesus

20 The Old Rugged Cross

21 It Ain't No Fun To Me

22 Gotta Find A New World

23 Keep On Pushing Love

24 Jesus is Waiting

25 Real Love

Listen here.

Friday, March 11, 2011

A Journey Up Highway 61: Memphis

The rolling hill country of northern Mississippi melts into the horizon as 61 Highway rumbles into Memphis, Tennessee. Grandly named by its founding fathers for the ancient river port of Old Kingdom Egypt, Memphis has taken after its namesake with gusto. A major inland port high above the banks of the Mississippi, Memphis by the early 20^th century was the largest lumber, cotton and mule (!) market in the world. In the days when it meant something, Memphis was one of the most important railway junctions in the United States and today Highway 61 turns into I-55 and runs up through Arkansas for a while before veering east. All this economic activity and accessibility meant that sharecroppers and vagabonds, hobos and hoods drifted into the city looking for work, anonymity and prospects that were brighter than those they were leaving behind.

As in New Orleans, it is a fool’s game to try to ‘encapsulate’ the musical culture of Memphis with any single description or label. All the genres of New Orleans are found here if in altered forms. The journey up through the bayous of Louisana, across the Delta and through the hills has changed the jazz and blues and into something at once more grittier and silkier in Memphis. Smooth uptown soul and funky r&b are this city’s greatest gifts to the world but they are by no means the only ones. Every form of American music has its champions and purveyors in Memphis. And no other city, possibly in the world, has seen so many influential recording studios/labels operating to shape popular music as in Memphis. Sun Studios recorded virtually the entire first generation of rock ‘n roll (Elvis, Jerry Lee, Johnny Cash, Howling Wolf, BB King, Carl Perkins, Ike Turner, and on and on). Stax, reinvented the blues and soul in the late 60s with the likes of Issac Hayes, Albert King, Irma Thomas and Booker T and the MGs (apologies to the myriad others who made great music in those hallowed walls). Over at Hi the sweet Willie Mitchell sound was being perfected by the angelic singing of Al Green and Ann Peebles.

How does one select just five ‘Memphis’ records? How do you cover all of this city’s musical bases? Don’t know. Certainly can’t be done in one simple blog post. So let this ultra thin sample simply be that aperitif that gets the juices flowing and moves you to spend many hours and days feasting on the rugged sounds of this bustling cultural petrie dish.

First up, the King himself. Elvis Presley returned to his hometown after a decade in Hollywood where his mighty Almighty-granted talents had been smothered by B-movie shlock. In January 1969 he went into American Recording Studios for ten days of recording. He was determined to reclaim his crown as the King of Rock ‘n roll and cleanse his soul of the syrup of his lightweight and sanitised soundtrack work of the past ten years. Elvis (not without some powerful persuasion to stay in Memphis to record rather than escaping up the pike to the familiar, yet more conservative Nashville) went on record the most powerful music of his career since his first Sun and RCA work of the mid 50s. Indeed, these sides were his first sessions in Memphis since he’d last recorded for Sam Phillips at Sun Studios in 1955.To use the vernacular, he burned the fucking house down.

Have a listen.

Track Listing:

1. Stranger in My Own Hometown

2. Power of My Love

3. Only the Strong Survive

4. Any Day Now

5. Suspicious Minds

6. Long Black Limosine

7. Wearin’ that Loved On Look

8. I’ll Hold You in My Heart

9. After Loving You

10. Rubberneckin’

11. I’m Movin On

12. Gentle on My Mind

13. True Love Travels on a Gravel Road

14. It Keeps Right on Hurtin’

15. You’ll Think of Me

16. Mama Like the Roses

17. Don’t Cry Daddy

18. In the Ghetto

19. The Fair is Moving On

20. Inherit the Wind

21. Kentucky Wind

22. Without Love

23. Who am I?

Listen here.

Elvis got his start in Sun Studios as did so many other giants of American music. Johnny Cash, the sharecropper’s boy from Arkansas turned up at Sam Phillips doorstep with a couple of friends and recorded some gospel songs as well as Cry, Cry, Cry. The rest, as they say, is History. Here is a collection of his Sun Studio hits. There are 28 of them. Nearly everyone is by now deeply embedded into every American’s subconscious. Raw, outlaw country. The real stuff.

Track Listing

1. Cry, Cry, Cry

2. Folsom Prison Blues

3. So Doggone Lonesome

4. I Walk the Line

5. Get Rhythm

6. There You Go

7. Train of Love

8. Next in Line

9. Don’t Make Me Go

10. Home of the Blues

11. Give My Love to Rose

12. Ballad of a Teenage Queen

13. Big River

14. Guess Things Happen That Way

15. Come in Stranger

16. The Ways of a Woman in Love

17. You’re the Nearest Thing to Heaven

18. Its Just About Time

19. Luther Played the Boogie

20. Thanks a lot

21. Katy Too

22. Goodbye Little Darlin’

23. Straight A’s in Love

24. I Love You Because

25. Mean Eyed Cat

26. Oh Lonesome Me

27. Rock Island Line

28. Down the Street to 301

Listen here.

Three Sun Studio musicians decided to branch out on their own and ended up setting up Hi Records. After a couple successful runs with mainly rockabilly and instrumental music a producer cum trumpet player named Willie Mitchell took control of the company and developed a sound that is one of the most distinctive of any recording label/studio. His first great success was the fabulous Ann Peebles best known for her hit Can’t Stand the Rain. Her smooth slinky style fitted perfectly with Mitchell’s preference for unison horn lines, organ/ guitar fills and snappy driving drumming. Her classic albums Straight From the Heart (1972) and Can’t Stand the Rain (1974) are offered here as evidence of the heights to which the highly refined Memphis soul sound could ascend.

Track Listing

1. Slipped, Tripped and Fell in Love

2. Trouble, Heartaches and Sadness

3. What You Laid on Me

4. How Strong is a Woman

5. Somebody’s On Your Case

6. I Feel Like Breaking Up Someone’s Home

7. I’ve Been There Before

8. I Pity the Fool

9. 99 Pounds

10. I Take What I want

11. I Can’t Stand the Rain

12. Do I Need You

13. Until You Came into My Life

14. (You Keep Me) Hanging On

15. Run, Run, Run

16. If We Can’t Trust Each Other

17. A Love Vibration

18. You Got to Feed the Fire

19. I’m Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down

20. One Way Street

Listen here.

Willie Mitchell and Hi Records best known artist was Al Green who dominated the R&B charts in the early 70s and has yet to be seriously challenged as the greatest southern soul singer America has ever produced. His 1972 masterpiece, I’m Still in Love With You is the place to start (but hopefully not end) an appreciation of this man’s amazing ability to squeeze air from his lungs. If there is a record more perfect in its pacing, its varied song selection (Green has always covered country music and his slow paced Pretty Woman gives Orbison’s classic a complete and absolutely believe make-over)and more sensual in its exposition of LOVE, then please contact me! I want to hear it.

Track Listing:

1. I’m Still In Love With You

2. I’m Glad You’re Mine

3. Love and Happiness

4. What a Wonderful Thing Love Is

5. Simply Beautiful

6. Oh Pretty Woman

7. For the Good Times

8. Look What You Done for Me

9. One of These Good Old Days

Listen here.

We can’t leave Memphis without a taste of the blues and I’ve selected Memphis Blood: The Sun Sessions by James Blood Ulmer. A jazz guitarist who made his reputation with the free jazz maestro Ornette Coleman, Ulmer’s 2001 interpretation of some of the blues’ most famous songs is full on. He has fun and lets it all hang out but keeps the blues feeling without allowing his fingers to run too far off into avant garde jazz land. A wonderful, powerful blues outing. And recorded at Sun Studios to boot!