Tag: Al Green

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Opinion The Last Word

The Rant

CREDIT: Reuters | Bernadett Szabo

After every Memphis Grizzlies game, my brother-in-law is fond of getting online and posting, “I am a Grizzlies maniac,” with several exclamation points, depending on the closeness of the game. As of this writing, the opening series of the NBA playoffs is still undecided, but win or lose, how exciting has this been for Memphis?

It’s a wondrous thing to see this city come together and rally around a common cause. Just think, if we could only get the City Council to do the same.

For this community, the Grizzlies mean so much more than basketball. They are a focal point around which all Memphians can unite, and those occasions have proven so rare, it’s worthy that we celebrate when it happens. My only problem is, with three overtime games in a row, the Griz are fixing to throw me into cardiac arrhythmia. Thank God for Obamacare.

I now understand how, once you know a player’s background and watch his attitude on the court, you become more invested in the games and individual performances. Your spirits rise and fall throughout the season until the storyline plays out. Judging from the past couple of games at FedEx Forum, Grizzlies fans’ spirits are pretty damn high. My wife has attended several games this season, while I am content to watch from the couch. It’s tinnitus. My ears just can’t take it anymore. But the entire Forum nearly burst right through the flat screen the other night. It’s no wonder the Grizzlies were named “best overall professional sports franchise” by ESPN The Magazine. And that includes baseball, football, and hockey. 

The city’s adopting of this team and these players is nearly as heartwarming as all the work these guys seem to so happily do for the community. This group has a workmanlike ethic for a blue-collar town and the fit seems just right. The league needs a team like this precisely because they play as a team. I just hope the new owners don’t screw it up and try to turn the Griz into the run-and-gun Lakers. Why mess with a good thing?

How can you help but admire these guys, especially the Grindfather himself, Tony Allen? This guy is everywhere. Statistics can’t begin to show what he adds to this team. I am hesitant to admire him too much, however, for fear that they’ll trade him. His defensive play is an art, and speaking of the same, I’d like to add a word about defense. When you speak of, say, the secretary of defense, or say a game was a “defensive struggle,” the accent is always on the second syllable. So why does a sports crowd always scream “DEE-fense?”

Because Memphis is supposed to be different, I’d like to urge our citizens to be the only fans in all of sports to shout, “de-FENSE!” That will mess with the other teams’ minds. That aside, the past two games, the Forum was rocking with chants of “Z-Bo,” and I thought I saw paint chips falling from the ceiling after Mike Miller went on a three-point tear. Even before we learned the name, Beno Udrih, Melody and I were screaming, “Way to go, new guy!” at the television screen. What’s better than watching Mike Conley’s calm under pressure? And we definitely got the right Gasol.

Reuters | Bernadett Szabo

Jerry Lee Lewis

A year ago, I wrote a column that said the Grizzlies were great, but the music sucked. Since then, I’ve heard Willie Mitchell, Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes, and James Brown over the arena’s speakers. So, all praises to the tune selector, and I hope my rant helped. Now, if I could just make a couple more suggestions. If a player on the opposing team travels, play a snippet of Rufus Thomas singing, “Justa, justa, justa walkin’.” When our big men block an opponent’s shot, Elvis’ “Return to Sender” would be appropriate. And when one of our guys hits a three-pointer, play Jerry Lee Lewis singing, “Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire.” Also, the Bar-Kays’ “Soulfinger” needs to be the team’s fight song, only the crowd can scream, “Go Grizzlies,” where they shout “Soulfinger,” in the original recording. One more thing. Why must they play that same inane chant in every arena right before tip-off? Let’s chant “Na, Nas” with Wilson Pickett’s “Land of 1000 Dances.” While we’re at it, “We Will Rock You” is one of the worst grooves in popular music and is awkward for Memphis folks used to clapping on the two-and-four. And were you aware that every time that heavy, guitar-drenched song where everyone yells, “Hey!” is played, you are profiting Gary Glitter, a sexual deviate so depraved that they kicked him out of Thailand?

Keep it simple, fellas. It might be enjoyable to watch an entire arena full of crazed fans doing the “Funky Chicken.” Even more fun to be there doing it.

Randy Haspel writes the “Born-Again Hippies” blog, where a version of this column first appeared.

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Cover Feature News

A Hall of Our Own

CREDIT: Deanie Parker Collection. Center for Southern Folklore Archives.

On the constellation of Memphis music attractions, the Smithsonian Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum doesn’t burn quite as bright as Graceland, Sun Studio, or the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. But since its founding more than a decade ago, the museum has served a useful purpose in pulling the different strands of the Memphis music story into one narrative.

This month, with the launch of the first Memphis Music Hall of Fame, Rock ‘n’ Soul steps into the spotlight.

The general idea of a Memphis-specific Hall of Fame has been in the air for decades, but the current realization — with an inaugural class of 25 inductees that was announced last month and will be feted at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts next week — has its origins in a Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum strategic planning meeting roughly seven years ago.

The museum had incurred debt in its original setup at the Gibson Guitar Factory and then relocation costs when it moved to its current home at FedExForum. It took awhile to get those issues under control.

“As we were feeling like our head was coming above water, we were able to really focus on what is our mission,” says museum executive director John Doyle. “And we felt like this was something that’s an extension of our mission to preserve and tell the story of Memphis music and to perpetuate its legacy.”

Kevin Kane, the head of the Memphis Convention and Visitors Bureau, who also serves as the chairman of the Rock ‘n’ Soul board, was a big proponent of the project.

“This should have happened 20 years ago. If any city deserves it, it’s Memphis,” Kane says. “We felt like we were the obvious entity to do this. Us or the Music Commission or Music Foundation. It makes sense for it to be us. We’re that portal to tell an overarching story that transcends Sun, Stax, etc. And we have a facility, unlike the commission or foundation. People walk through on a daily basis. We have a footprint.”

Doyle says he and the museum’s planning committee consulted other music attractions in town before launching the project.

“We wanted to make sure it wasn’t a faux pas to do this,” he says. “No one was biting at the bullet to do this because it takes a lot of work, and it takes a lot of money to do it right. We felt like we were the people to do it, because we tell the complete Memphis music story. But we’re not looking to pound our chest and say Rock ‘n’ Soul’s doing this. We think it’s something that’s right for the city.”

The Parlor Game

In order to make this idea a reality, Doyle assembled a 12-member nominating committee of music professionals only partly rooted in Memphis, a group that included, among others, authors Peter Guralnick and Nelson George, former Commercial Appeal music critics Larry Nager and Bill Ellis, former executive director of the national Rhythm & Blues Foundation Patricia Wilson Aden, and former Smithsonian curator and Southern historian Pete Daniel.

This May, on the weekend of the annual Blues Music Awards, Doyle brought most of the group to Memphis for a two-day session in a suite at FedExForum, where, facilitated by the Recording Academy’s Jon Hornyak and former Stax Museum director Deanie Parker, they came up with the first class of inductees for the first Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

It was the best Memphis music parlor game ever, with, after several rounds of initial nominations, 52 names arranged on a wall, whittled down to an inaugural class (see sidebar on p. 21) after two days of deliberations.

“We limited it to 25, which was more than we’ll do in other classes,” says longtime journalist and music-industry executive David Less, who was on the nominating committee and in the room for live deliberations. “We may do five names next year, but if you do five in the first year you don’t really have a hall of fame. You just have five guys. So we wanted to frontload it a little, but we didn’t want to say here’s everybody.”

“They wanted to know from the planning committee standpoint what we wanted from them,” Doyle says of the process. “Their first question was, Do you want the expected list of nominees? And I said I want what you consider the right list of nominees.”

There were no longevity guidelines. No “birth requirement.” No separate categories for non-performers.

“We set all of that aside,” Doyle says.

The class of inductees that emerged included obvious names (Elvis Presley, W.C. Handy), obscure names (Lucie Campbell, William T. McDaniel), and controversial names (Three 6 Mafia, ZZ Top). With the knowledge that this is meant to be an ongoing process, the group produced a representative list of key players in Memphis music history rather than 25 definitive names.

“We went around the group once and had everybody nominate somebody and observed that no one picked the four people we all knew other people would pick,” Less says. “No one wanted to waste their vote on Elvis or Sam Phillips or W.C. Handy or B.B. King. So after the first round we just said, these four people, let’s put them up there. We know they’re going to be there, so that frees us all up and we don’t have to talk about them anymore. We all agreed that those would be the ones who in any scenario had to be there.”

“Some of the big names on that inaugural list are there because they’re the biggest names,” says Ellis, who wasn’t in town for the meeting but contributed via e-mail and conference call. “But then outside of that is where we all sort of bring our own perspectives and fight for somebody, like a Jimmie Lunceford or a Lucie Campbell or even a Memphis Minnie, who was as important a blues pioneer as Muddy Waters in a way.”

Ellis pushed for gospel pioneer Campbell, while both he and George made a case for Three 6 Mafia, the youngest inductees. Less was a booster for jazz sideman George Coleman and educator William T. McDaniel.

“Music is more than just the stars, right? It’s a collective achievement, especially in a place like Memphis, where so much of what’s happened of historical merit has happened outside the purview of the hits, and there have been plenty of those,” Ellis says. “But the chart and sales success doesn’t explain the significance of a Lucie Campbell or a W.T. McDaniel. I was thrilled to be involved if only to see Campbell and Three 6 Mafia make the inaugural inductee list, the past and the future broadly laid out there.”

“My feeling is that it’s pretty easy to go Elvis, B.B. King, Isaac Hayes,” George says of pushing for Three 6 Mafia. “But I wanted to embrace the panorama and have it not just be people from the ’50s. And the Mafia winning the Oscar, that was a historic event.”

The curious-to-some inclusion of ZZ Top also seemed to emanate from a desire for a more contemporary presence in the initial class of inductees.

“ZZ Top, in truth, kept Ardent Records alive,” Less says in defense of the choice. “All of their first records were recorded here. They lived here while they were recording. You can’t count Sam & Dave if you don’t count ZZ Top.”

No one thinks the list is perfect, of course. Not even members of the committee that made it.

“I nominated Carla Thomas, but we decided you can’t put Rufus and Carla in the same year,” says longtime Memphis broadcaster Henry Nelson. “But Carla’s gotta go in the second year.”

Ellis, for one, echoes the common refrain about Johnny Cash’s absence from the list.

“Johnny Cash?” Ellis asks, with a hint of incredulity. “I can’t speak for the committee, but he’ll be on the next list.”

“Where’s Johnny Cash? Where’s Justin Timberlake? Where’s Carl Perkins? That doesn’t mean we don’t think they’re great or they won’t be in a Memphis Music Hall of Fame,” Less says. “It’s just the first blush, it’s not the last look. It’s not a definitive list. Our charge was not to produce the obvious, definitive people.”

Follow Through

Starting a hall of fame and picking a list of inductees is one thing. Making something of it is another, and where exactly this endeavor heads is still somewhat unknown. A website, including inductee profiles written by nominating committee members Guralnick, Ellis, Nager, and Robert Gordon, launched when the inductees were announced last month.

Next week, an induction ceremony will be held at the Cannon Center for the Performing Arts, produced by Willy Bearden, who will try to tell the story of the 25 inductees in roughly two and a half hours, including a series of musical performances with a house band of ace Memphis session musicians backing some of the living inductees as well as some of their children and artists they’ve influenced.

“It’s a tough thing to do, but I think we’ve been able to approach this in a little different way,” Bearden says. “There won’t be people standing at a podium inducting people. I can guarantee that this is going to be a really good show.”

Some time next year, according to Doyle, the Rock ‘n’ Soul will open an interactive Memphis Music Hall of Fame exhibit inside the current museum, while Kane says the group is exploring other avenues for some kind of “external public tribute.”

Left open is the prospect of a more extensive physical space for a Memphis Music Hall of Fame, either on its own or as a component of a larger Rock ‘n’ Soul space, something of which nominating committee members seem to be in favor.

“If there’s a way to incorporate it into the Rock ‘n’ Soul, that would be great,” says Less, who helped with the Rock ‘n’ Soul Museum’s initial launch. “I’m a proponent of synergy. I don’t think you make people go to two locations for essentially the same thing. Rock ‘n’ Soul is a limited story of Memphis music. When we started it, we set the parameters of it with the Smithsonian, and I think it’s a definitive portrait of that time frame. I think the Memphis Music Hall of Fame expands that conversation a little bit, but why send people to two places?”

“Will it be a separate building? We think that’s something the community needs to decide more than us, but it’s definitely not something that needs to happen immediately,” Doyle says. “It’s usually a 10-year process, because you’ve got to have that many inductees in order for it to be a compelling exhibit. Plus, here in Memphis, you’ve got icon buildings such as Sun Studio, Graceland, Stax, as well as our own museum. So we don’t know that there’s a need for another building.”

“If it warrants it or the opportunity presents itself to open another facility, we’ll look at that,” Kane says. “We’re not married to anything. With technology, you don’t need [as much space].”

Whatever road this project takes, it’s already been a conversation-starter.

“The great thing about a hall of fame is that everybody wants it. The bad thing is you can never do it right,” says Doyle, who is already planning to reassemble his nominating committee next spring to select a new class of inductees. “People are so passionate about music. But this will be decades for us. Ten years from now, we’ll be inducting Grammy winners and chart toppers.”

Among the names mentioned by various committee members as potential future inductees are Cash, Thomas, Timberlake, Big Star, the Blackwood Brothers, the Memphis Jug Band, Chips Moman, and on and on.

“There are only a handful of cities that could do this,” Less says. “Chicago. Detroit. New York. Los Angeles.”

“It’s another piece to providing a sustainable identity of Memphis as a major music capital and not just for the tourists,” Ellis says. “But for those who live in the city and take great pride in being part of something much larger than themselves.”

First Class …

The 25 Inaugural Inductees to the Memphis Music Hall of Fame.

Jim Stewart & Estelle Axton

The brother/sister duo who put the “St” and “ax” in Stax as co-founders of the city’s signature soul label.

Bobby “Blue” Bland

The soul-blues titan who honed his craft alongside other future stars in the 1950s vocal group the Beale Streeters.

Booker T. & the MGs

The Stax house band and hitmakers-in-their-own-right who embodied one version of the Memphis sound.

Lucie Campbell

The gospel composer who was a contemporary of the more famous Thomas A. Dorsey and who helped shape the black gospel sound of the pre-soul era.

George Coleman

The Memphis jazz great who was a saxophone sideman for B.B. King before joining up with the Miles Davis Quintet.

Jim Dickinson

The producer/sideman/bandleader who was a musical sponge and bridge between distant eras of Memphis music.

Al Green

The last soul legend who was the purest Memphis vocalist since Elvis Presley — and remains productive.

W.C. Handy

The “Father of the Blues” whose published compositions popularized the regional form.

Isaac Hayes

A Hall of Famer even before Shaft and Hot Buttered Soul who evolved from essential sideman/songwriter to superstar.

Howlin’ Wolf

The Delta-bred blues powerhouse who cut classic sides with Sam Phillips before migrating north to Chicago.

B.B. King

The “Beale Street Blues Boy” who started his career on radio and on stage locally before becoming the blues’ biggest modern star.

Jerry Lee Lewis

The piano-pounding revolutionary who traveled up from Louisiana and was introduced to the world via Sam Phillips’ Sun label.

Jimmie Lunceford

The Manassas High School gym teacher who evolved into the King of Swing.

Prof. W.T. McDaniel

A segregation-era music teacher at Manassas and Booker T. Washington high schools who trained multiple generations of Memphis musicians.

Memphis Minnie

The “Queen of Country Blues” who first hit Beale Street as a young teen and emerged as one of the signature blues artists of her era.

Willie Mitchell

The bandleader and producer who forged the sophisticated Hi Records soul sound and “discovered” Al Green.

Dewey Phillips

The original wild man of rock-and-roll radio who gave Elvis Presley his first spin.

Sam Phillips

The idiosyncratic producer and Sun Records founder who cut classic blues sides and then presided over the great wedding ceremony, marrying country and blues to create rock-and-roll.

Elvis Presley

The kid from Tupelo who waltzed into Sun Records and announced that he sang all kinds. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

Otis Redding

The soul man supreme who gave Stax Records its first true superstar and then left us too soon.

The Staple Singers

The family band who blended soul and country, gospel and blues into a distinctive sound — and had something to say.

Rufus Thomas

The prankster, patriarch, and pop-cultural preacher who drove Memphis music from the Rabbit Foot Minstrels to WattStax.

Three 6 Mafia

The Southern rap pioneers who graduated from selling self-made mixes out of their trunk to claiming Oscar gold on behalf of crunk.

Nat D. Williams

The “Beale Streeter by birth” who took the mic at WDIA to become the first black disc jockey on the country’s first all-African-American radio station.

ZZ Top

The dusty Texas blues band that honed its sound and emerged as superstars out of Memphis’ Ardent Studios.

The Memphis Music Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony

Cannon Center for the Performing Arts

Thursday, November 29th • 7 p.m.

Tickets are $100, $50, or $30.

memphismusichalloffame.com

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Opinion

Looking Back: Reunions, Hank Williams, Davy Jones, and Al Green

HankHungMoon.jpg

Who knew that Al Green can write as well as he can sing and preach? Or that Hank Williams could heal so many broken hearts? Or that the Jimi Hendrix experience once opened for Davy Jones and the Monkees?

I learned all of these things this week because of a confluence of musical forces.

One of them was an advance copy of a new book by Rheta Grimsley Johnson, former columnist for The Commercial Appeal. “Hank Hung the Moon, and Warmed Our Cold, Cold Hearts” is not a biography of Hank Williams but more of a musical memoir. The Alabama-born singer has been a comfort and inspiration to the Alabama-born writer all her life, helping her through the awkward phases of childhood, hundreds of long lonely drives as a columnist, and the sudden death of her second husband in 2009. The book is published by NewSouth Books and should be out soon.

Changing genres, Davy Jones, the cutest of the Monkees, died this week at the age of 66. The tidbit about Jimi Hendrix was in one of the obits. If you think about it, it’s pretty funny that Jimi Hendrix opened for anyone, especially some goofy white boys. The Monkees were the sixties answer to “American Idol” — a made-for-television band modeled, loosely, after the Beatles. Their big hits came out in 1967, the year I graduated from high school, and you could not possibly avoid them. Which brings me to . . .

Class reunions. If you are 27 or over you probably have gotten an invitation to one or two of these. Now they come supercharged by Facebook and e-mail, although I wonder if many in my demographic are paying attention. The Class of 1967 is having a 45th reunion. A tenth, sure, a 25th, maybe, a 50th if you’re lucky, but a 45th?

I guess it’s fitting because in a lot of ways we were the Class of In Between.

We were the first class of freshmen in the “new” East Grand Rapids High School. Newbies in a new building. You can’t get much lower than that. The old high school, still standing, reeked of history and tradition. The “new” one, which will be 50 years old next year, reeked of newness, Clearasil, and Canoe.

The touchstone of our freshman year was the assassination of President Kennedy on a Thursday afternoon in November. The see-you-later after graduation was the riots in Detroit in the Summer of ’67. We were products of the fifties but took the full brunt of the sixties.

The significance of those events was not lost on us, even then. But the truth is, my mind was probably preoccupied at the time with impure thoughts of some of my female classmates or the first day of basketball practice the next day. In sports as in algebra, the schedule proceeded as normal. Friday afternoon, as the nation mourned, the boys who would disappoint our classmates and coaches for the next four years took the floor. The athletic production line that had churned out so many champions pretty much shut down on the Class of ’67 and we managed to break winning streaks, start losing streaks, and set records for ineptitude. We even lost in sports like tennis and swimming as other schools and suburbs discovered the wonders of country clubs, affluence, courts with nets, and indoor swimming pools. Girls had three sports options: cheerleading, water ballet, or not being in cheerleading or water ballet. But times changed. Thanks to them, the school now boasts hundreds of championships.

We lived in an unannexed bedroom community not unlike present-day Germantown or Collierville, minus the black students. The Grand Rapids ghetto was a few miles from my house but might as well have been another planet for all I knew about it. Only last year, when someone loaned me “Thin Ice,” a book of coming-of-age stories about growing up in Grand Rapids, did I learn that one of its residents was a future Memphian and musical legend.

Al Greene, as he spelled his name then, moved from Forrest City, Arkansas to Michigan when he was a boy and lived there for about ten years. His story, “Half a Chance to Prove Myself,” is the best one in a very strong collection, for my money. He took and gave some beatings, learned that his gift was for singing not fighting, formed a group called Al Greene and the Creations, went solo, dropped the final “e” and moved to Memphis to record with Willie Mitchell’s band in 1968.

His autobiography is called “Take Me To the River.” Get it, or get “Thin Ice.” He was saved, as he tells it, by his own toughness, a caring teacher or two, and a local church. And, of course, that voice.

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Music Music Features

Here He Is

The recently released Lay It Down is now the third Al Green album in the past few years (following 2003’s I Can’t Stop and 2005’s Everything’s O.K.). After mostly eschewing secular music for a couple of decades, the good Reverend Green is suddenly nearly as prolific as he was during his ’70s heyday.

In truth, there may not be a single truly memorable song across these three “comeback” discs, but as groove music, this stretch of recordings is so consistently pleasurable that it suggests that as long as Green’s voice is in good health and he’s paired with an understanding, supportive producer, he may be incapable of making a bad record.

After two pairings with Willie Mitchell back at his old Royal Studio stomping grounds, Green heads north here, recording at studios in New York and Philadelphia with Amir “?uestlove” Thompson (drummer for Philly hip-hop band the Roots) and keyboardist James Poyser producing and contemporary neo-soul stars Anthony Hamilton, John Legend, and Corinne Bailey Rae providing occasional support.

In theory, this is a recipe for good publicity and overheated, overdone music, but Thompson’s tastes are too refined and his demeanor too reluctant to compromise to take any of the easy commercial routes. The imposing but soft-voiced Thompson has told reporters that he was inspired by Van Lear Rose, the recent Jack White-produced Loretta Lynn album that’s the very best of the aging-legend-meets-hip-inheritor brand of high-concept comeback albums.

On Van Lear Rose, White doesn’t drown Lynn in guest stars or overly fetishize her musical persona. He just provides her with a bracing, contemporary setting and lets her be the best possible version of her modern self. Thompson wondered why the same thing couldn’t happen in black music and set out to make Lay It Down (after a sadly aborted attempt to coax the reclusive Bill Withers into the studio) a soul equivalent to Van Lear Rose. And he succeeded.

There are two familiar ways record companies have come to repackage legends: the covers/standards record and the cameo-laden tribute-oriented disc. Thompson dismissed the former and, though he invited some of his scene cohorts to participate, makes sure everyone involved pays homage to Green by providing him with an energizing forum and then getting out of his way.

The original tracks for the bulk of Lay It Down were recorded in one night at Electric Lady Studios in New York, with Thompson and Poyser (who set the album’s percussive foundation themselves on drums and keys) attempting to replicate the relaxed imperfections of ’70s recording conditions while Green wrote in the studio.

When I Can’t Stop and Everything’s O.K. dropped, the neo-soul scene was firmly grounded. But, in the period since Everything’s O.K., a retro-soul movement has bloomed, one driven by young musicians as inspired by Green’s classic ’70s work as their neo-soul counterparts but even more obsessive about modernizing the sound of that music without losing its spirit. And that segment of the contemporary soul world makes an impact on Lay It Down, with the Dap-Kings Horns spiking the action.

As a result, Green found himself not with old companions connected via nostalgia or a shared desire to prove they can still be contemporary, but rather with younger cohorts striving to live up to Green’s own greatness. Thompson baldly stated he wanted to come away with the best Al Green record since The Belle Album, and he may have succeeded.

In comparison to its immediate predecessors (both very good records in their own right), Lay It Down sounds more vintage without sounding like it’s trying as hard to sound vintage. It’s a subtle, moody, slow-burning groove album in the classic Green tradition, but the difference is somewhere in the grain and texture of the music that defies description.

If Lay It Down hadn’t been preceded by I Can’t Stop and Everything’s O.K., very solid records with the great back-story of Green’s reunion with Willie Mitchell, it would be getting even more attention. It’s probably the best album by a classic-era soul star since Aretha Franklin’s Who’s Zoomin’ Who? in 1985. And while Thompson and Poyser’s stewardship of the product is heroic, there’s only one genius here, and that’s Green.

Other soul singers — Franklin, Sam Cooke — have perhaps been as great. But no other great soul singer is as distinctive as Green. His vocals — not just his voice — are one of recorded pop’s most brilliant instruments. That array of flutters, sighs, grunts, repetitions, and other effects transcends mere words even when in the service of a great lyric. That vocal brilliance is apparent on almost any Al Green record, but it’s decades since it’s been as consistently gripping as it is on Lay It Down.

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Special Sections

Al Green Sings … A L’il Christmas Gift from the Memphis Flyer

Turn it up. Christmas carols don’t get any better than this one. Merry Christmas from all of us here in Flyer-land!

Categories
Music Music Features

Soul Comes Home

After a long absence from secular music, Al Green — arguably Memphis music’s most important living artist — has been busy this decade, with two new collaborations with producer Willie Mitchell, 2003’s I Can’t Stop and 2005’s Everything’s O.K., prompting a heavy touring schedule.

This week, at the Memphis Botanic Garden, Green will give his first public Memphis concert in recent memory. Green took time out during a European tour that landed him in London, Madrid, Paris, and the Netherlands to talk to the Flyer about his homecoming concert, the exciting new album he’s been working on, and how he ran into Justin Timberlake at an overseas airport.

Flyer: Has your touring schedule increased in the aftermath of these last two albums?

Al Green: Last year we did 147 shows. This year we’re doing 130 shows. It was really two things: It was [Green’s guest appearances on] the Ally McBeal shows — there was an awakening of something there. And it’s the new albums with Willie Mitchell. We’ve been opening our shows with “I Can’t Stop.”

And you’ve been working on a new record?

Yeah. We’re doing another album with a hip-hop band called the Roots. I’ve done two songs with Anthony Hamilton. I got two songs with D’Angelo. And hopefully I’ll get two songs with a girl singer. They’re trying to pick between Alicia Keyes and the new girl from Blue Note, Joss Stone. It’s gonna come out [later this year]. I wrote 15 songs for it, but they can’t use but 12.

Everyone says Al sings like Al, but the music is different. The music is kind of hip-hop. That’s the way they want to make it, but they don’t want me to sing any different: “You sing like yourself. And let us do the music.” It’s coming off nice.

What was it like working with a younger generation of musicians and producers?

They are so up on things. Quick to catch little things. Anthony Hamilton and D’Angelo just wanted to come into the studio to hear me sing. But I wanted to write some songs. So me and Anthony did two songs, and he did the background on another one. I’m hoping for the best. I want to do a good job. I’m not a very complicated man or extravagant man, as you can see living with me there in Memphis.

You mentioned the heavy touring you’ve been doing the past couple of years, but I can’t remember the last public concert you gave in Memphis. How long has it been?

I’ve done two concerts at the Peabody. One was for the American Cancer Society. The other was for St. Jude, and that was this year, now. But the members bought up all the tickets. But this time at the Botanic Garden is for the public. I really can’t remember the last one before that.

Why has it been so long?

Because I live in Memphis. I kind of like to work other places than where my home is and where the church, the Tabernacle, is. People come from all over the world to see Al down at the Tabernacle on Hale Road in Whitehaven. It’s amazing to see all these people come.

Will the show in Memphis mean anything different to you?

For me, I have to be real and approach it the same way I would the show in Paris or London. I have just one way of doing it, and that’s to go out there and sing from your heart.

A lot of focus in Memphis lately has been on Justin Timberlake, whose family is here and who claims the city as his hometown.

Yeah, he’s my neighbor. His people live out in Shelby Forest. I live out in Shelby Forest. I talk to his mother at the gas station.

We were at the airport the day before yesterday and believe me, coming through the line, going through the maze, was Joe Cocker’s band, because he was opening the show for me; Justin Timberlake and all his group — boy, there’s a lot of them; and Al Green’s band and all his people. The guy at the checkpoint said, “How many bands do we have here?”

So you just ran into Timberlake at the airport?

Yeah. It was nice to run into him. I get to hug him, and he gets to hug me, and there’s really nothing else to say. We all went to the checkpoint, and everyone had to pull off their shoes and take off their belts and go through the metal detectors.

What do you thinkP about what Timberlake is doing lately with his music? It seems to have become a lot more R&B-oriented.

What I think is not important. I have to let Justin do what he thinks in his heart is good for him. He has to work out his own destiny, just like I had to work out mine. It’s what he thinks about himself that matters.

Now, he’s got about three bodyguards who are about 6′-6″. I shook hands with all three of them, and, man, my little hand in theirs looked like a little penny or something. I’m going like, “Damn, what do you eat?” And this one guy said [in a deep, growling voice], “People.” I said, “Oh, okay. Get away from this guy.” [Laughs]

Thanks for taking the time to talk to us.

Well, look, tell all the people at the Flyer and back in Memphis that I said hello and that I also said love and happiness, because that’s what the world is made of, and I believe in that. I’m gonna stick to my guns and try to do a great show in my hometown. Me and the band, I mean, we’re gonna get down. You’re gonna come to the show cause you know I’m gonna rock the house. What do I always do? I rock the house. Ain’t no doubt about that. So come on down with your rocking shoes on.

Al Green

“Live at the Garden”

Memphis Botanic Garden

Saturday, July 21st

Showtime 8:30 p.m., tickets $35-$86