There are some voices that cannot belong to ordinary earthlings. Unmistakably deriving from the highest, most heavenly source, they, paradoxically, turn out to be the most human voices of all. The numerous, fertile, reproducing genres of vocal music have been united by the connective tissue of this one fundamental; jazz has its Ella Fitzgerald, rock its Robert Plant, gospel its Mahalia Jackson, country its Patsy Cline. Neither the sting of the trumpet nor the sigh of the cello can really quite compare.
The early ‘70s introduced us to Al Green, commonly labeled the Last Great Southern Soul Singer. Soul music, now burgeoning through the cracks in overproduced modern R&B and tired rock scholarship, is the ultimate combination of American music, bursting with roots in down-home country, wailing blues, African American gospel, and the transforming politics of its peak period. Its bastion is probably Aretha Franklin; its seducer is nobody but Green.
I don’t remember the first time I heard this man. Was it in the voice of Prince, D’Angelo, Sade, or one of the other disciples? His cultural image today seems tarnished, lumped together with the synthesized, boring boudoir music that is erroneously perceived as the soul tradition. One day I picked up Call Me, an album Green made in 1973. With all the imitators and incarnations on the market, there is still really nothing like it.
First there are the horns. They jump in without hesitation; the listener might feel whacked over the head. But with a closer listen, within the half-second it takes for them to sound, they actually bloom, augment, initially soft and coy, then forceful. The brief introduction of the title track is a little misleading because it suggests one of the funk workouts from Al Green two years prior, like his retooling of the Temptations’ “I Can’t Get Next to You.” But “Call Me (Come Back Home)” switches on itself once the gentle rhythm section and the rolling guitar landscape set in. Reinterpreting the Memphis sound once dominated by the coarser Stax studio, Al Green and his Hi Records producer Willie Mitchell were creating a unique way of being both pastoral-Southern and metropolitan-stylish. The result is intimate and mind-blowing.
At the center is this voice that does everything but stand still. It’s restless and wise, swinging, whispering, shouting with almost unbearable precision. Green is no conventional soul singer; he is not traditionally cathartic like James Brown or Aretha, but he has the same emotional itch. The current neo-soul revolution, largely spearheaded in the mid-1990s by young beatniks D’Angelo and Erykah Badu, has made leaps and bounds in giving R&B legitimacy for nonconformists and thinkers, where once rock, folk, and classical were seen as the only kinds of music for the smart individual.
But the movement reflects historical trends of idolization, proclaiming the more overtly political but less gifted Marvin Gaye and Donny Hathaway, and outspoken underground hip-hop, as its inspiration; that’s likely the reason why Green’s a bit misunderstood and underrated as a genuine pioneer in his genre. He’s publicized as an artist for the “lesser” issues: love, God, and sex. The belting and soaring and vocal gesticulating that became an integral part of R&B and, later, of pop, are traded in for humming and murmuring and subtle inflections that prove to be equally powerful. In his music, the overtones of the civil rights movement become undertones, but the message and the hurt are never silenced or sacrificed.
Call Me is a thirty-five minute opus from a time before annoying rap interludes and unending length desperately tried to make albums more cinematic; it serves as a soul substitute for Frank Sinatra’s revered and morose Only the Lonely. Both Sinatra and Green fetishize the pain of love and the denial of loss. Even the exquisitely propulsive and upbeat “Here I Am (Come and Take Me)” contains the buried lines “You broke my heart into half” and “You just can’t trust everybody.” While Sinatra wallowed in regret, and had the voice for gloom, his marathons of sad saloon songs are really an acquired taste. Green’s performances, in contrast, are a constant struggle to get over rejection, and there’s a lightness and a heavy deepness to the personal connection he makes with the listener.
“Have You Been Making Out O.K.” is comfy right up until the climactic end, with a chorus of multi-tracked, harmonizing Greens crying out in thinly veiled longing. It’s the counterpart to Sinatra’s “What’s New?” but, instead of culminating with a focus on the unexpected, confessional lyric, Green decides that his power is in the vocal chords rather than the words. His is a falsetto that’s not androgynous and is clearly masculine, but he nevertheless made it cool for male singers to use their upper registers to show vulnerability or subversion.
Green is a prime example of a songwriter so in-tune with his own voice that the writing and the singing seem to become one and the same. Who else could write a Black-identity song like “Stand Up,” an anthem so moving and uplifting – physically and spiritually – it would seem inappropriate for angry activism? As an iconoclastic surveyor of diverse genres, who else could repair Willie Nelson’s country classic “Funny How Time Slips Away” after Diana Ross mangled it?
Firmly remaining in the soul idiom, Call Me is too infectious to be called anything but pop; perhaps the extra polish makes it more accessible than I’m Still in Love With You, another critics’ favorite that ends up being more groove-oriented and more scatterbrained. Before Stevie Wonder turned R&B into rock ‘n’ roll, and Green himself dedicated his career to gospel, Call Me became a touchstone and bridge between smooth, popular soul from Chicago and Detroit and the grittier stomp of the deep-soul South. Before teen idol Justin Timberlake wins any more R&B credibility for paying Green homage, and country singer Shelby Lynne gets her due as the Al of her generation, acquaint thyself with the originator. His ineffable force transmits the sexiness of sorrow.
By Andrew Chan [SEPTEMBER 21, 2002]