Al Green - Call Me (Hi) (1972) by Kurt Hernon

There is a thread in the fabric of nearly every important record from the 1970’s that is likely never to be replicated. It’s a weird but deeply affecting fiber that somehow dug its way into the psyche of not only the United States, but rather ran deep into the spirit of a worldwide culture that had, in the aftermath of World War Two, looked to the USA as some sort of beacon of human possibility. Then the 1960’s happened.

Yet, in a purely historic sense, the most significant thing about the 1960’s, as much as those who lived them would likely argue, is that they begat the 1970’s. While the 60’s were a troublesome awakening, an early development of an evolving and growing culture, they were merely a seeding, they were the Junior High that was a meager prelude to the ugliness of the 1970’s. Those years, 1970-1979, were the brutal adolescence of this, the so-called American century.

The effects of this “coming of age” period were not confined to gender, religion, age, nor race, this was as significant a cultural shifting as has ever occurred in our times. Somehow, this “mood”, this “groove”, this “aura”, this sense of the times, the places, the changes occurring, crept into much of the great music during these times.

Al Green’s Call Me is no exception, but rather it is an exceptional example - perhaps the finest - of where modern culture was moving; of how the culture would now be of the people, for the people, and by the people. And beyond all of that, away from the significant cultural marker that it serves as, Call Me still towers as one of the great monuments to musical possibility, rock, soul, or otherwise. It is, quite simply, one of the greatest musical achievements of the rockroll era.

Al Green had been on a roll. Four consecutive records of astonishing soulfulness, countless hit songs, and an otherworldly command of a voice that seemed to exist as incontrovertible proof of the existence of a higher power, had preceded Call Me and had left little in the way of expectations because there was no apparent higher plane to which Green could carry his music. Where else could it all go? So little faith…

Being a black man singing in a deeply spiritual fashion (albeit not quite “religious” yet, as Rev. Al wasn’t quite ready to make the leap he’d later make - successfully - to full-on religiosity) and covering Hank Williams (“I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry”) and Willie Nelson (“Funny How Time Slips Away”) in the early 1970’s was more of a dicey business than it would likely seem nowadays. But to cover those songs and to command them, to take them and strip away any pretensions or preconceptions and to pull the very human soul out of every fiber of the words and music and to turn that soul into unrequited beauty - again, as a black man, a mere four years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the aftermath of what occurred in Watts, in the midst of the fading days of Vietnam, under the ham fisted government attempts at “urban renewal”, and during the birth and infancy of Watergate itself, well, for a black man to soulfully sing a Hank Williams song seems positively sublime if not absurd.
But Green did just that. He avoided the ephemera of the times; he tossed the old rules out the window; he laid claim to all things American, even its beloved hillbilly music, with disregard to the color of skin, or the definition of religion, or the pretense of social status…after all, in the end, it was Jesus who was waiting.

Yet, away from the socio-cultural significance of Green’s musical approach to Call Me, beyond the pieces of his dream, outside of this grand and peaceful claim to his share of the American Dream, there stands a record of dizzyingly intimate soul music. There are warm, soothing, and commanding horn charts. There is Teenie Hodges guitar, announcing its intention of trying (trying) to compete with Green’s vocals. There is the intimate and brilliant production of Willie Mitchell, sustaining a sense of otherworldly confidence throughout the entire recording. There are songs…wonderful songs…about strength (“Have You Been Making Out O.K.”), determination (“Stand Up”), joy (“Your Love is Like the Morning Sun”), and faith (“Jesus is Waiting”). But most of all there is Al Green, and his miraculous voice.

Green runs his voice through all of the paces on Call Me. It soars; it whispers; it cries; it squeals with joyful glee. It is an instrument, not the work of human hands, but rather, I am sure Al would tell us, the work of a God who is always present. And it’s enough to make you believe.

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