Kimmer was making a fan page tonight for Scott Morgan see it HERE and I happened upon Al Green and was instantly dancing around my office. So I thought I'd share some hugs and moves with you guys and make you wanna be with me until I die!
From Rolling Stone Full Story HERE
To a greater extent than even his predecessors Sam Cooke and Otis Redding, Al Green embodies both the sacred and the profane in soul music. He was one of the Seventies' most popular vocalists, selling over 20 million albums. His wildly improvisational, ecstatic cries and moans came directly from gospel music, and in the late-1970s he returned to the Baptist church as a preacher. He continues to record albums in a pop-gospel style (to date he has earned eight gospel Grammys) with close ties to the Memphis soul music that made him famous.
Green (who dropped the third "e" from his surname when he went solo) was born to a large family of sharecroppers. When he was nine, he and his brothers formed a gospel quartet, the Greene Brothers. They toured the gospel circuits in the South and after the family moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan, three years later. Green's father dismissed him from the quartet after he caught him listening to the "profane music" of Jackie Wilson.
At 16 he formed a pop group, Al Greene and the Creations, with high school friends. Two members of the Creations, Palmer James and Curtis Rogers, founded a record company, Hot Line Music Journal, for which the group — renamed Al Greene and the Soul Mates — cut "Back Up Train" in 1967. The single went to Number Five on the national R&B chart. Follow-ups failed, however, and the group broke up.
As a solo act no one can top Al Green...
"What an amazing coincidence that you wrote that post on a day that I've been thinking a lot about a few of the songs that I sang at an acoustic performance last weekend. I took a page from Seal in covering Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come" and we also did "Dock Of The Bay" by Otis Redding in a style that I'm almost certain that I'm taking from Al Green - though I can't find a recording of Al covering that song to satisfy how strongly I feel that I got from him the idea of adding on a four beat measure of soulful wailing to the end of the bridge."
ReplyDeleteThis is pretty strange. I went to see the new Cohen Brothers film A serious Man and the soundtrack was the Jefferson Airplane Surrealistic Pillow Album. I really like the Airplane back in the day. I liked the stuff on your website on Grace Slick and the music clips. I don't know how you keep up on all the stuff you put on there but I have to say it is very cool. I love the Rationals music. How was the concert at the Blind Pig?
ReplyDeleteTom