![]() “ I suggested singing it to Willie,”said Green. Green’s first Hi single, a pulverizing revival of The Beatles’ I Want To Hold Your Hand, didn’t reverse Al’s fortunes. I said, ‘You can be a star!’ He said, ‘How long would it take?’ I said, ‘About 18 months.’ He said, ‘I don’t have that long to wait!’ Anyway, he did come back to Memphis, and we started working, trying to figure out a new style for him.” When I heard him sing, I said, ‘Well, he needs to go back to Memphis with me.’ So I asked him if he would like to go. “I told him he could do a couple of tunes with the band that night, and I would help him get back. “He wanted to get his fare back home,”said the late Mitchell. Mitchell was the bandleader that fateful night. Green dropped the second ‘e’ from his name, and he was scuffling when herode a Greyhound bus into Midland, Texas for a late ’68 gig. “I thought it was a good song, and it sold real good.” “ “It was my first song ever, so I have a special kind of a bond to it,”says Green. ![]() In early ‘68, Back Up Train chugged to #5 R&B and #41 pop. “They kind of discovered me.”Larry Uttal’s New York-based Bell Records picked up national distribution. “ Palmer James and Curtis and all those boys, they did such a great job with that music,”says Green. But their manager Lee Virgis launched his own label, the oddly monikered Hot Line Music Journal, and Al Greene & The Soul Mates waxed the ethereal Back Up Train, penned by Soul Mates Palmer James and Curtis Rodgers. The young singer persevered, his Creations making a 1967 single for the Zodiac label that stiffed. Al’s dad was religious, and when he learned his son had joined an R&B vocal group during the mid-‘60s, he was evicted from the family domicile. His family toiled as sharecroppers until relocating to Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1955. His lilting tenor conveyed love and intimacy like no other soul man of his era.īorn Apin tiny Dansby, Arkansas, Al Greene grew up in rural Jacknash, Ark. From the moment Memphis producer Willie Mitchell began molding him into a singular performer at Hi Records, stardom was assured. A more mercurial character than Al Green would be hard to find. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |