"I sang 'Sha-La-La (Make Me Happy)' for two or three weeks straight in Willie's studio. I'd do that before he even turned on the tape machine. And when he did, he'd say, 'That sounds good, but I want it to sound even better.' We'd do it over and over, until we got"--he sings--"'spending my day thinking 'bout you, girl.' He might keep the first take, but he'd want me to keep singing it. So I guess these other folks didn't know Al Green the way Al Green knows Al Green. They'd be like, 'That's great, that's great, that's great!' But they didn't let me sing it and sing it and sing it until I really felt in myself, 'Now you can take it. Because I'm there now.'"
For his next album project, Green hopes to reunite with Mitchell--"We're going to go into the studio and kick it around a little bit," he teases. In the meantime, he's concentrating on live performances, having recently reasserted his onstage preeminence during some high-profile gigs. He delivered probably the best single set during the concert celebrating the grand opening of Cleveland's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, thrilling the crowd with renditions of "Tired of Being Alone" and Sam Cooke's "A Change Is Gonna Come." More recently, he led an all-star sing-along of "Love and Happiness" that capped the closing ceremony for the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Viewers won't soon forget the sight of Green and his famous friends (such as Stevie Wonder, B.B. King, Little Richard and the Pointer Sisters) getting down while Vice President Al Gore stiffly clapped his hands as if he were at a barn dance. "Yeah, we were kicking butt," Green announces a second before breaking up again.
Because of this higher profile, Green's church is becoming a legitimate tourist attraction--something that seems to have caught him off-guard. "Oddly, strangely, a lot of whites are coming down to the church," he says. "And a lot of blacks as well. But basically, I'm color-blind. People just enjoy it when you be yourself. I said to them yesterday, 'You know me. I've been singing "For the Good Times" and all these songs, and I've been telling you how good is the man upstairs--how good it is that He can make something good out of something that was not good.' And the people were loving it.
"Afterward," he notes, "some of them were confused whether to call me 'Reverend Green' or 'Al Green.' And I told them about this time I went to Berlin, and there were people whispering in the car. I asked the driver what they were whispering about, and he said, 'They want to know whether to call you "Reverend Green" or to call you "Al Green."' And I said, 'I'm the same person I've always been. I'm not some big, big, big, high-minded person. I still live forty miles from where I was born.' So I told them, 'Just call me Al.'"
Janus Jazz Aspen at Snowmass Summer Festival '96, with Al Green, the Robert Cray Band and Marva Wright. Noon Sunday, September 1, Snowmass Town Park, 1-800-
