REVEREND LOVE

Al Green was born to preach. Even before he became an ordained Baptist minister, Green was spreading his gospel of love to music fans around the world with signature hits like “I’m Still In Love With You,” “Let’s Stay Together,” and “Sha-La-La (Make Me Happy).” His recent critically acclaimed Top-10 album, Lay It Down, introduced the soul legend to a new generation of fans.

Proving he can still hang with anyone, Green was a last minute replacement for Chris Brown at the 2009 Grammy Awards telecast, and wowed the crowd performing a duet version of his signature hit “Let’s Stay Together” with Justin Timberlake.

In a telephone interview earlier this year, it quickly became clear that you can take Al Green out of the church, but you can’t take the church out of Al Green. Like a preacher swept up in the middle of a fiery sermon, Green has a tendency to break into song in the middle of an answer, and often refers to himself in the third person. It made for an unusual, but entertaining interview.

Green also has a playful sense of humor. When asked if he follows any special regiment to keep his voice in such good shape, he answers, “Yeah I drink a whole bottle of lemonade!”

Green should be in a jovial mood these days. The 62-year-old soul legend is riding a wave of positive publicity in the wake of the May 2008 release of Lay It Down, which incredibly became the first album by the nine-time Grammy winner to debut in the Top-10 of Billboard’s Album Chart.

“I had never had that happen,” Green said. “I really was shocked, and everybody in the band was shocked. Even the album I’m Still in Love With You didn’t debut in the Top-10, and it sold a lot of records.”

From 1971 to 1976, Green did indeed sell a lot of records. He had 13 Top-40 hits, including “Here I Am (Come and Take Me),” “Call Me (Come Back Home),” and “You Ought to Be With Me,” as well as eight albums that reached the Top-30 on the charts.

Green abandoned secular music in the late-’70s, became an ordained minister, and took up residence at the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church, just outside Memphis, Tennessee. For nearly 25 years, Green recorded only gospel and Christmas music.

In 2003, Green signed with Blue Note Records and agreed to record secular music again. Lay It Down is Green’s third album in the past six years. On the previous two, I Can’t Stop (2003) and Everything’s OK (2005), Green reunited with Willie Mitchell, the producer behind Green’s hit albums. In an attempt to recapture, as well as update Green’s classic sound, the albums were recorded in the same studio used in the ‘70s, employing many of the same musicians from 30 years ago.

While both albums were well received critically, I Can’t Stop sold less than 300,000 copies, and Everything’s OK sold under 125,000. Hoping to generate more commercial appeal, Blue Note Records asked Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson of the Philadelphia-based hip-hop group the Roots, and his associate James Poyser, to produce what would become Lay It Down.

Once Green agreed to the proposal, Thompson and Poyser began an intensive study of Green’s recordings. Thompson says his goal was to make the unofficial follow-up to The Belle Album, Green's last major critical success from the ’70s.

"Thing is, you really have to do your homework. I studied all of Al's music," Thompson told the Philadelphia Daily News. "I studied the engineering of every album. That's basically what we were trying to approximate and also get a mark of our own."

Contemporary artists Anthony Hamilton, Corinne Bailey Rae, and John Legend were brought in for guest appearances.

In the end, Lay It Down manages to sound like classic Al Green without sounding like it’s trying to recreate the past. But while Thompson says that was always the intention, Green maintains that initially the team envisioned a more modern sound.

“They wanted to play the music as hip-hop as they could,” Green says. “I told them to go right ahead, because I knew they wasn’t going to be able to do it. Because once you start wrapping the music around Al…. You gonna try to play it a different way, but when you get done with it, it’s gonna come out [sounding] like 1973, ’74, ’75, ’76, ’77….

“Eventually they just started playing it like we were singing it,” Green added. “That’s all you can do, really. With a song like ‘Take Your Time,’ or ‘Stay With Me (By The Sea),’ ain’t no sense in playing no Jimi Hendrix on it, or Miles Davis on it. You’ve got to play (singing) ‘Stay with me by the sea’ the way it goes, you know?

Green is in full preacher mode now.

“My name is Otis Redding,” he says, to illustrate the other cloth from which he’s cut. “And my name is David Ruffin… and Sam Cooke… and Jackie Wilson… and Wilson Pickett.”

Lay It Down was in production for over two years, but most of that time was spent working out the logistics of the participants. Green says the songs were written quickly, soon after entering the studio.

“What you’re getting is the cream, baby,” he says. “This is not something we had in a box for 4,000 years, this is something we just wrote this past February. Yeah, ‘Lay It Down’ I just laid it down.”

Green has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Songwriters Hall of Fame, the Gospel Music Hall of Fame, and is the recipient of the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. On June 24, Green added to his long list of achievements when he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the BET Awards in Los Angeles. Three days later, he fulfilled a lifelong dream when he headlined Carnegie Hall for the first time.

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From The Pulpit:

Rev. Al Green is not shy about speaking his mind. Here’s a little fire and brimstone on a variety of topics.

Were you familiar with the Roots, Anthony Hamilton, Corinne Bailey Rae, or John Legend before working with them on "Lay It Down"?

“No, no, no, I was not. I saw the Roots on TV once in Trinidad. That was the only time I’d ever seen the Roots. I’d only heard the song that Corinne sang on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Something about ‘put your records on.’ I heard one song by John legend, but I can’t really think of what it was. I had heard a song by Anthony Hamilton, because I have two of his CDs, but I have never played one yet.

“I’m kind of reeling, man. I get a lot of music. I mean, record companies send me boxes of music, and I can’t play everything and stay sane at the same time. It’s just a lot of stuff.”

Do most visitors come to the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church to worship, or to see Al Green?

“I know people come for a thousand reasons to church. They mostly come to hear me sing ‘For The Good Times.’ I know that. I don’t care what reason they came for. Our thing is while they are there we get to tell them about the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, and do a little bit of ‘Amazing Grace’ and let them know that that grace is for them.

“So I don’t care what reason you came. And then after that I send him back to Elvis’s place.”


On touring and performing at various House of Blues venues:

“The House of Blues is one of my favorite places to play, because we can get down in the House of Blues. There’s like 14 or 15 of us up there [on stage]. We’ve been together like six or seven years. So we know each other. Every time I twitch my foot they know what I’m doing.

“We can really have a good time. And when you come upon our hotel floor, you don’t hear no noise, no parties, no women, no hollering and tearing up the room and trashing the hotel…. We don’t have that kind of junk. You get a $5,000 fine if you do that junk in my band. I’ll fine your ass.”

On rap music:

"All our songs are about love – not machine guns, killing, war, drugs, gangs and sex. You gotta be able to invest 12 years in prison to be a rapper, or at least you been shot five or six times or committed some crime to be a rapper. ‘I was shot nine times right in the toe – now I can rap because I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been behind bars…’

“I just think that’s a poor illustration for our young children, 11, 12, and 13 years old. I mean, if you listen to that, or look at that stuff long enough in the videos with them big dog chains around their necks, and all them diamonds shining out of their mouth – you would think that’s how real life is.

“And I have to tell those children that that ain’t the way life is, baby. You ain’t going to be surrounded by a bunch of girls in two-piece bikinis dancin’ and wigglin’ all the time. You have to get up off your ass and go to work. Make sure you put that in your article. That’s coming from the Reverend.”

Macy Gray's "Big" Return

Before Macy Gray released her current album, Big, earlier this year, more than a few music industry insiders had closed the book on her music career. The singer, best known for the Grammy Award winning hit “I Try,” had not released an album since 2003’s commercially disappointing The Trouble With Being Myself, and had since parted ways with her record company.

Four years between albums is a lifetime in the music business. But Gray, who performed at Atlantic City's Borgata Music Box along with opening act the Brand New Heavies in September, says she always knew she would rebound.

“I was definitely confident [that I would wind up on another major label],” Gray said in a telephone interview in advance of the Borgata show. “I thought about my next album a lot. [The break between albums] gave me time to figure out what I was going to do next, and how I was going to do it.”

While the time away from music allowed her to further pursue her acting career (she’s appeared in such films as Training Day, Domino, Shadowboxer, and Idlewild), and start her own clothing lines (the high-end Natalie Hinds Collection for women, SNAC for men’s fashion, and HUMPS, for “voluptuous women”) she eventually signed with will.i.am Records, headed by and named for Black Eyed Peas leader and in-demand producer William James Adams Jr.

Soon after, Gray recorded Big with an elite group of producers and guest artists, including will.i.am, Ron Fair, Justin Timberlake, Fergie, and Natalie Cole. Released in March 2007, and featuring the singles “Finally Made Me Happy,” “Shoo Be Doo,” and “What I Gotta Do,” Big has become Gray’s most critically acclaimed and most commercially successful album since her 1999 debut, On How Life Is.

Born Natalie Renee McIntyre in Canton, Ohio, Gray studied piano at an early age, but never envisioned herself as a performer, much less a singer. She moved to Los Angeles to attend USC’s film school in the hope of becoming a screenwriter. While there, she became friends with a group of musicians who convinced her to try her hand at songwriting, and eventually, singing.
“I was shy about doing music because kids used to make fun of my voice when I was younger,” Gray said in a 1996 interview for the All Music Guide.

“Squeaky,” “raspy,” “scratchy,” and about a dozen similar adjectives — none of which begin to do it justice — have been used to describe Gray’s distinctive, soulful voice. Gray has heard them all, and recently added her own description to the mix.

“You know what? I think my voice is better now than it has ever been,” she said in an interview for You Magazine. “It sounds like raspberries — like ripe raspberries — and I like raspberries a lot.”

Gray says the songs on Big came together in a variety of ways.

“Every song is different,” she says. “On some songs I had an idea and I would sing it to my piano player. I always come up with a hook line and a melody first, then put it together. With people like Will and Justin, they build the track first, and then they come up with the hook. Everybody does it a different way.”

Lyrically, the album covers familiar territory.

“It’s always ... talking about life and love and all the things that everybody goes through,” Gray says.

While Big boasts its share of old-school instrumentation and lush production, executive producers will.i.am and Ron Fair manage to add a modern edge to the proceedings while maintaining Gray’s distinctive, somewhat retro sound.

“Musically, there are a lot of beats. At the same time, there’s a lot of production on it, a lot of strings, horns, keyboards. So it’s a really built album,” Gray says. “It varies from one song to another. I wanted it to be different from everything else that’s out there. So we took our chances.”

The approach seems to have worked. Besides overwhelmingly positive press, Big has already attracted a more diverse audience than Gray’s previous albums.

“Up until now my audience was mostly white females,” Gray says. “On my first couple of albums I didn’t really have a black audience. I wasn’t embraced by black radio at all. But for this album [my audience has been] very mixed — I get a lot of black people, a lot of guys, even a couple of kids.”

Fans at Gray’s Borgata show witnessed a performance that appealed to the eyes as well as the ears. Gray and her eight-piece band performed nearly all of Big, as well as over a half-dozen songs from her first three albums in a highly polished, 75-minute set.

“Besides the music, there are a lot of visual dynamics going on. The set list has a storyline,” Gray says. “We crafted every minute of our show. We don’t have revolving stages and a bunch of dancers. It’s just me and my band, but I think it’s just as much a show as anybody else’s. It’s pretty hot. You have to see it.”

The Classic Soul of Ryan Shaw

A few weeks ago I happened to hear a song called "Do the 45" playing on Internet radio. I thought I was listening to an obscure soul classic from Wilson Pickett, Junior Walker, Sam and Dave, or some lesser-known soul artist of the same era.

I was only half right.

"Do the 45" is an obscure soul classic originally done by a group called the Sharpees in 1966. But the version I heard was recorded over 40 years later by a soul prodigy named Ryan Shaw. If it weren't for the improvements in sound recording that have been achieved over the past 40 years, Shaw's version could pass for an undiscovered chestnut.

That's a compliment.

Of the 12 slices of retro-soul featured on Ryan Shaw's debut CD, This Is Ryan Shaw, nine are covers of lesser-known hits originally made famous 30 to 40 years ago by Wilson Pickett, Jackie Wilson, Bobby Womack, and others. The remaining three are original songs written or co-written by Shaw. If you're not well versed in your vintage soul, however, you might have a hard time figuring out which are originals and which are covers.

That's also a complement.

Since the release of This Is Ryan Shaw earlier this year, the 26-year-old Decatur, Georgia native has received his fair share of media attention. The press is fascinated by his retro-sound. Critics write about his powerful and mature singing style. Reviewers praise his dynamic stage presence. But what is mentioned most often, in article after article, is the fact that Shaw never heard Wilson Pickett, Jackie Wilson, Bobby Womack, Donny Hathaway – or any other secular music – until he was 18.

Shaw, who performs Thursday, November 8 at Collingswood, New Jersery’s Scottish Rite Auditorium opening for the Derek Trucks Band, grew up in a deeply religious Pentecostal family. Music was an important part of his life from an early age, but it was strictly gospel music played in church, not the pop, soul, hip-hop, rock or R&B played on radio and MTV. He began singing in church at the age of five, and later formed a family group with his four brothers called the Shaw Boys. Shaw's early musical influences all came from the gospel world – singers like Darryl Coley, Keith Brooks, James Moore, and the Pace Sisters.

The first time he heard music that wasn’t gospel was when he left home for college. After briefly attending Georgia State University, he successfully auditioned for the gospel musical A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Part II). In 1998, he joined the cast of I Know I've Been Changed, written and directed by Tyler Perry (Diary of a Mad Black Woman). Shaw moved to New York with the production and performed to sold-out crowds at the Beacon Theater.

After the closing of I Know I've Been Changed, Ryan joined the resident cast of the Motown Café on West 57th Street where he performed Detroit soul favorites by the Four Tops and Marvin Gaye. Later he found another steady gig with a group that he says played “just about anything from the Fifties and Sixties that you could dance to – Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole, Stax and Motown, Dion & the Belmonts, you name it.”

In a recent telephone interview, Shaw said that he gravitated toward soul music from the 60’s and early 70’s because many of those artists also started out singing gospel music.

“Those singers came out of the church, so I’ve been singing like them my whole life,” he said. “We all sang the same music growing up. I just didn’t know about their secular side. But it’s all based on traditional gospel music. It wasn’t a big switch for me, or anything I had to study. When I heard Wilson Pickett, and Sam and Dave – I said, ‘that was the same song I sang in church last Sunday, only with different words.’”

When he first decided to pursue a career in music, he considered becoming a gospel artist.

“Being born and raised in the church, you think that’s your only option,” Shaw says. “I’ve considered it. Even when I was first signed to the label, they talked about doing a gospel album. My third album might be a gospel album, I’m not sure.”

Shaw says the follow-up to This Is Ryan Shaw won’t be a gospel album, but it won’t be another collection dominated by covers, either.

“The next one is going to be pretty much all original,” he says. “The purpose of the first album was to establish me as a singer; hopefully the next album will establish me as a writer and as a more complete artist. There’s a possibility that there might be a few covers that I really love on the album, but they’ll be even more obscure than the stuff I covered on the first record.”

Since his album’s release last March, Shaw has toured the country as both a headliner and a support act. He’s opened for a variety of R&B, jazz, and blues artists, including John Legend, Buddy Guy, Joss Stone, and Los Lonely Boys. He’s even appeared at Lollapalooza.

Shaw says that even though “it’s more work to win over an audience when you’re opening for somebody,” he hasn’t met an audience yet that he couldn’t win over.

“There hasn’t been a bad show yet,” he says. “I think the strangest one was when we opened up for [jazz instrumental group] Bela Fleck and the Flecktones. Their crowd is a different group of people, but they still love real music. When I first came out, it was like blank faces and crickets chirping. But halfway through the second song, they were with me. By the end of the show, they were going crazy.”

Shaw acknowledges that given the strong musical statement he made with his debut album, the industry has already labeled him as a soul singer. While he’s comfortable with the label, he’d like to establish a career in which he’s known as a singer who can handle any style of music.

“You go back to someone like Aretha Franklin – Aretha did two or three jazz albums, then she did the Rock Steady album, she did a little bit of everything. People just loved her. It wasn’t about the song, it was Aretha. No matter what Aretha was doing, people loved her and they knew what she brought to the table.”

“I think a great song is a great song whether it’s sung by a country artist, or a soul artist, or a rock ‘n’ roll artist,” he adds. “I think people love real music. I think what attracts people to what I do is my interpretation of it all. Not necessarily the song, but what I bring to the table.”