When you’re one of the best singers ever, taking care of your voice is no joke. But for Al ꦫGreen, it’s nothing to sweat about.
Even at 73, the R&B icon — who will make a rare concert appearance Sund𒉰ay at Radio City Music Hall — has still got that “Here Iౠ Am (Come and Take Me)” swag when it comes to his instrument.
“I really don’t do nothin’ to it, man. I just let it be itself — it’ll be OK,” says Green, who in 2010 was ranked No. 14 on a Rol𒁏ling Stone list of the 100 greatest singers of all time. “That’s all I’ve ever done to it . . . If it ain’t broke, what are you fixin’ on? Put your tools back in the tool kit.”
Firing up his mighty pipes — a Southern-fried mix of soul, gospel and sexiness — Green embarked on a mini-tour last week. Including a show at the 50th♌-anniversary edition of the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival last Sunday, it’s his first concert trek in more than seven years.
“I ain’t too worried about getting the groove back,” says Green on the phone from his Memphis, Tenn., hometown, his speaking voice sounding exactly the w🌟ay it does when he sings. “I’m not too worried about singing.”
Still, being in his 70s, Green had to step up the cardio exerciseﷺ, including jogging and walking, to improve his endurance and breath control. Now he’s in road-ready shape to breathe fresh life — for himself and the audience — into all of his classics, from “Let’🍬s Stay Together” to “Love and Happiness.”
“When I sing these songs, physically I begin to burst out all over because I know what they mean and💛 I know why I wrote ’em,” says Green. “They come alive every time the band startsไ to play ’em. Aw, man, they come alive so much. That’s all over you — you can’t escape it.”
Green — who became a Baptist minister in 1976 and founded Memphis’ Full Gospel Ta🍷bernacle, where he still preaches regularly as senior pastor — w൲ill be favoring his secular songs over the sacred material he once recorded exclusively. But, to him, it’s still all the Lord’s music.
“I’ve m⛎anaged to do both because the good Lord is good, man. Somebody gave me the song from the beginning, and I think he gave me ‘Tired of Being Alone’ and ‘Take Me to the River’ and all this stuff,” says Green, adding that the church is the spiritual foundation of his R&B work: “Soul music has very much to do with whatever you do for the soul.”
Although the 11-time Grammy winner says that “Tired of Being Alone” is his favorite tune to perform🐲 live after all these years — “That’s my first baby,” he says of his 1971 hit — he knows that “Let’s Stay Together” is the one Al Green classic people will keep running to when it’s time to tie the knot.
“I think it’s wonderful,” says Green of his only No. 1 single becoming a fa🍬vorite wedding song. “I don’t have no complaints about that because my daddy and my mama planned a life together, and here come little Al! So I have to be cool with it ’cause I came here by the same measure.”
It was pretty cool, he admits, when then-President Obama crooned ಌsome of “Let’s Stay Together” at the Apollo Theater before a speech in 2012. “He did a magnificent job,” says Green. “I wa🐠s trying to copy him when I sang it the other day!”
After this mini-tour ends next week, Green — who hasn’t re♎leased a studio album since 2008’s “Lay It Down” — is planning to work on his next LP. And this legendary soul man is going country: “I’✃m going to do a little country and western. I think it will be mostly covers, with maybe two or three original songs.”
Clearly, Green is still in love with the 🙈music that made him a Rock & Roll Hall of Famer. “I just want to keep doing what I’m doing, if I can do it strong,” he says. “I don’t see a finishing [line] that gets me off track. If I can continue to love it and be assured that it’s going to help somebody other than me, I’ll be fine.”