Al Green

Al Green (born Albert Leornes Greene on April 13, 1946, in Forrest City, Arkansas) was the sixth of ten children born to a sharecropping family^[1]. He started singing gospel as a child in a family group with his siblings, and his family relocated to Grand Rapids, Michigan in the late 1950s, where the group kept performing^[1][2]. As a teenager, Green's devoutly religious father caught him listening to Jackie Wilson and threw him out of the family group and, for a time, the household, a rupture that pushed Green toward the more secular R&B he'd go on to define^[2].

In high school Green formed Al Greene & the Creations, which evolved into Al Greene & the Soul Mates. The group recorded "Back Up Train" in 1966, a modest R&B chart hit that gave Green his first taste of success without yet establishing him as a star^[2].

The turning point came in 1969, when producer Willie Mitchell hired Green as a vocalist and signed him to Hi Records in Memphis^[2]. Mitchell became Green's vocal mentor, steering him away from imitating the singers he'd grown up on and toward a looser, more physical delivery built around the Hi Rhythm Section^[2]. That partnership produced "Tired of Being Alone" in 1971, Green's commercial breakthrough, and carried through the era-defining run of hits that followed, including "Let's Stay Together" and "Love and Happiness."

Green's career took a devastating turn on October 18, 1974, when a former girlfriend, Mary Woodson, attacked him with boiling grits, causing severe burns, before taking her own life in his home^[2]. Green has cited the tragedy as a catalyst for the spiritual transformation that followed. After a fall from the stage in Cincinnati in 1979, he shifted his focus toward gospel music and ministry, founding the Full Gospel Tabernacle church in Memphis in 1976 and recording gospel albums through much of the 1980s before returning to secular music in 1988^[2].

Green was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002 among his eleven total Grammy wins, and was honored at the Kennedy Center in 2014^[2].