The catalogue of Hi Records-- the magnificent Memphis label that cranked out hits from the 1950s to the 70s-- has been in and out of print for the last few decades, and now it's been licensed by Fat Possum. The first fruits of the unlikely deal are reissues of three of Hi's crown jewels: Al Green's fourth and fifth albums, and the magnificent greatest-hits collection that followed them a few years later.
Other soul singers may have had more raw power or a wider stylistic range (although not many of them), but nobody else had Green's virtuosity or interpretive gifts. He could articulate unbelievably delicate shades of feeling with his voice alone; he had an astonishing sense of timing, of pitch, of emphasis, of drama. And, while virtually every other soul marquee name of the era was recording with session dudes, he had a real band worthy of his gifts: guitarist Teenie Hodges, organist Charles Hodges, bassist Leroy Hodges, drummers Howard Grimes and Al Jackson, backup singers Rhodes, Chalmers and Rhodes, and producer Willie Mitchell, who'd had a string of instrumental hits of his own in the 60s and knew how to shape Green's expansive gifts into compact 210-second packages. (Callow youth may know the Hodges brothers as those dudes who backed up Cat Power circa The Greatest.)
The title track of Let's Stay Together is a karaoke standard and an "American Idol" joke. Surprise: it got there by being one of the best-sung hits of the 70s. Virtually everyone who's covered it has surrendered to the temptation to oversing it; the genius of Green's performance is that he's murmuring it to the person on the next pillow, not declaiming it for the neighbors to bear witness. Green wasn't yet firing on all cylinders as a songwriter, but even the album's lesser songs get spectacular performances. (As with his entire pre-gospel career, Jesus turns up unexpectedly-- this time in the middle of the otherwise secular groove "So You're Leaving".) The album's centerpiece is a six-minute-plus cover of the Bee Gees' ballad "How Can You Mend a Broken Heart", on which his vocal is so light and flexible it seems to be fluttering in the breeze coming off the drums.
I'm Still In Love With You recapitulates the successful Let's Stay Together formula, right down to the unlikely six-and-a-half-minute cover-- this time it's Kris Kristofferson's "For the Good Times". But that album had mostly been "I don't want to break up" songs; this one is solidly "I love you, sweetie" material, and it's even better. In part, that's because Green had learned to write to his voice's strengths, especially his superhuman falsetto. ("Simply Beautiful", close-miked and nearly whispered, is a shudder of ecstasy at the mere image of a lover's body.) The band's arrangements are a master class in getting out of the way of the groove-- "Love and Happiness" is all headroom and negative space, and the drum break at the top of "I'm Glad You're Mine" is as understated as funk gets.
The present incarnation of the double-platinum Greatest Hits is not quite the original version-- the track listing shifted a little in '77-- but it's the 10-song sequence a lot of babies got made to: three songs from Still In Love, the title track from Let's Stay Together, and six more impeccable classics from the 1970-73 period. The smartly sequenced track listing proceeds from "Tired of Being Alone" to "Let's Get Married", and the lyrical range encompasses I-want-you, I-want-you-back, and I've-got-you-and-I'm-happy-about-it songs. If there's such a thing as an underplayed song from it, it's probably "I Can't Get Next to You", the 1970 single that saved him from one-hit-wonder-dom. The Temptations had had a #1 hit with it the year before, and Green swoops in and steals the song anyway. He transforms the arrangement to a slow, fretful Southern 6/8 bump-and-grind, and sings every line as a message of total sexual desperation, fading out on a perfect high note at precisely the pitch that disintegrates panty elastic.
As with the other reissues, the new Greatest Hits trims off the additional material that's turned up on the last few editions: no bonus tracks, no liner notes or historical context, just the album. Doesn't matter, as long as Fat Possum can get this stuff in print and keep it there.
