“The most important music to me was those hip-shakin’ boys”: How R&B got Al Green kicked out of home
Thanks to his seminal Hi Records releases of incredible soul songs such as ‘Let’s Stay Together’, ‘Tired of Being Alone’, and ‘How Can You Mend a Broken Heart?’, Al Green will forever be best remembered as one of the smoothest and most talented singers working in popular music.
His most recent single, a cover of REM’s ‘Everybody Hurts’, following on from 2023’s recording of Lou Reed’s ‘Perfect Day’, show that Green remains as emotive and soulful as ever. In fact, all the age and cracked imperfections now present in his voice—and maybe even because of them—add an extra layer of poignancy, making his performances as brilliant, heartbreaking and heartwarming as they’ve ever been.
But for a long time, music has not been the sole focus in his life. In 1976, he founded the Full Gospel Tabernacle church in South Memphis, Tennessee. Green was later ordained as a priest and has been referred to as The Reverend Al Green ever since. He still regularly performs sermons at the church, and the sweet sounds of heaven are never far away, thanks to the weekly gospel recitals there.
While rhythm and blues has always had its grounding in gospel music, Al Green’s early infatuation with the genre proved to be a problem for his father. Green was born in 1946 to Cora Lee and Robert G Greene Jr. His father was a devoutly religious sharecropper who was happy enough when his son started performing religious music with his sisters at the age of ten but, was less than pleased with the way his boy’s tastes developed.
“I listened to Mahalia Jackson, all the great gospel singers,” Green once said. “But the most important music to me was those hip-shakin’ boys, Wilson Pickett and Elvis Presley. When I was 13, I just loved Elvis Presley. Whatever he got, I went out and bought.” Presley had shocked the nation with his hip-shakin’ on The Milton Berle Show – to the point that he was only allowed to be filmed from the waist up when he appeared to an audience of 60 million on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1957 – and was accused with corrupting the young minds of America’s next generation.
One of Elvis’ favourite singers of the 1960s was Jackie Wilson, and Al Green was a fan as well. His father was far from impressed, though, and felt that he had heard enough. After losing his patience with Green’s love of the wild side of rhythm and blues, he threw his son out of the family home to fend for himself after catching him listening to Jackie Wilson records.
Of course, Green went on to enjoy great successes in his own R&B career but suffered a troubled personal life, likely due to his difficult upbringing. To compound his struggles with his housing situation, Green developed a deepening drug dependency and, for long periods over the next two decades, struggled to control his anger and would become violent towards wives, girlfriends and backing musicians. In 1974, he was hospitalised following a fight with his girlfriend, who later committed suicide. In the wake of this devastation, Green turned back to God for guidance, comfort and solace. It was then that he decided to open the Full Gospel Tabernacle.
Though he had rebelled against his father’s wishes to pursue a life in the church for a life in rhythm and blues, Green returned to his religious roots around this time and moved away from more secular material through most of the 1980s. He released a string of gospel albums, starred alongside Patti LaBelle in the Broadway play Your Arms Are Too Short to Box With God, and was the subject of the 1985 documentary about his church, Gospel According to Al Green.
He wouldn’t release another fully secular album again until 2003’s I Can’t Stop, which was his highest charting release since 1975. His two studio follow-ups since 2005’s Everything’s OK and Lay It Down from 2008 continued to perform well in the charts, and each album was more warmly received than the last.
