Let’s Stay Together/Al Green (1972)
I spent my junior year of high school in a poor county in eastern Kentucky. The school district was one of the poorest in the state. And the state ranked 49th of 50 in education quality. It was an interesting year. The year of Goats Head Soup, Rock On, Benny and the Jets and Ramblin’ Man.
It was also the year I was introduced to a singer named Al Green. A black kid named Robert sat behind me in English class. He liked a jean jacket I wore that had a big silk “?” sewn on the back. We chatted from time to time and eventually I let him have the jacket. For his part he kept encouraging me to listen to Al Green, making his first name sound like I-owe.
In those days AM radio seemed to play everything. Bowie one minute, Cher the next followed by Edgar Winter or Roberta Flack. And sometime after Robert mentioned Al Green to me I heard Let’s Stay Together. It was instant love. The taut trumpet intro, the whispered ‘let’s stay together’, the rolling shuffle of the drums, the sweet soaring strings and then …‘I I I’ m/so in love with you’. The greatest soul voice in the United States enters the fray and over the course of 3 and half short minutes leaves you breathless and gasping for more.
This record, number 5 on my list, opened my ears to soul, gospel, rhythm and blues and funk, the music of black America of which I have still not tired. Thank you Robert!
njrabe 