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In God He Trusts: Al Green reaches higher

James Hunter, The Boston Phoenix, 12 January 1982

IN THE '70s, in Memphis, Al Green and producer Willie Mitchell made quietly unstoppable soul music the world still hasn't gotten over. If at first this music sounded suspiciously stylized and cautious, it was because the Green-Mitchell Hi Records sound was itself one large risk: a loose, precisely cut swatch of downhome velvet, with each joyous high prepared for by a ponderously precise low, and held together by rhythms stitched with their own grace and power. The sound succeeded wondrously or failed utterly as the first flighty snare hovered over a low bottom of bass. Green and Mitchell could take this canny, creamy soul music wherever they liked (which turned out not to be overwhelming distances) and by the time Green himself took it to the river, the music was completely defined and properly deified: beautiful, masterly, and full of intimations of greater rhythms (somehow held temptingly at bay) fuelling the actual rhythms that were tastefully and intelligently alive in the music.

Total word count of piece: 1123

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