Call Me

Green, Al

album cover

The Apex of Soul Singing

Thanks to the enormous popularity of TV's American Idol, the ideal of singing in this great land has devolved into a kind of extreme sport—empty athletic expressions, bombastic shows of brutal lung power. Al Green does not sing this way. He's gonna sneak in. He's gonna slide over until he's inches from your ear. He's hardly gonna open his mouth, just enough to give you one of those patented "Hmmm baby" lines that go right down to your knees. Have you been makin' out OK?

This works better.

This is singing of such subtlety and control it makes anything showy seem incredibly coarse by comparison. Starting with Gets Next to You (1971) and continuing through five releases over the next three years, Green, producer Willie Mitchell, and a crew of tuned-in Memphis musicians created not just a stack of hits, but a deeper shade of soul, in which nuance matters more than shouting. The "sound" that helped make Green one of the greats is minimal. Skeletal guitar, creeping organ, pattering drums set the table. Then Green slinks in and whips up a gourmet feast.

Though it wasn't the breakthrough (that would be Gets Next to You) and doesn't have the hugest hits (that would be Let's Stay Together), Call Me is Green's first totally cohesive statement. It's the moment when everything clicks, and the moment just before Green and Mitchell are aware of everything clicking: Later works have just a hint of self-consciousness.

Call Me also sports two of the most compelling covers in Green's songbook—the Hank Williams chestnut "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" and Willie Nelson's "Funny How Time Slips Away." These are as significant as the loverman originals—in part because they remind you of how the great voices of the South, white and black, moved their listeners beyond stereotypical notions about race.

With Green, all considerations of style and genre, the twang of Williams and all the rest, become insignificant next to the intense and perpetual seduction in progress. Green does his beautiful thing without clobbering anyone over the head. If everyone in America listened to him once a week, American Idol would quickly seem meaningless.

Genre: R&B
Released: 1973, Hi Records/The Right Stuff
Key Tracks: "Call Me," "Have You Been Makin' Out OK?," "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry," "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)"
Catalog Choice: Let's Stay Together; I'm Still In Love with You
Next Stop: Donny Hathaway: These Songs for You, Live
After That: Tyrone Davis: Turn Back the Hands of Time
Book Pages: 323–324