One Song - Al Green's "Let's Stay Together"

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

Whether times are good or bad, happy or sad, Diallo & LUXXURY are here to comfort you by breaking down one of the most memorable R&B songs of all time. On this episode, the guys discuss how Al Green wrote the “Let’s Stay Together” so quickly, why producer WIllie Mitchell’s influenced Green’s singing style, and share Green’s sweet, isolated falsetto vocals. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Luxury. Today's song is one of the most memorable soul songs of all time. It's the biggest hit from this iconic soul singer, and it reached number one on both the Billboard Hot 100 and R&B charts in 1972. It beat out Dal McLean's American Pie Parts 1 and 2. There's a real good chance that you've heard this singer's unmistakable falsetto in a jillion movies, TV shows, and weddings. And whether times are good or bad, happy or sad, the sound is bound to get you feeling And saucy. It's one song, and that song is Let's Stay Together by Al Green. I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ, Diyalo Riddle.

And I'm producer, DJ songwriter, and musicologist luxury, also known as the guy who sometimes talks about interpolation on the internet. If you want to watch one song, please go to our YouTube channel and watch this full episode. All right, let's start. Diallo, you are sounding extra sexy today. I'm keeping it sexy today. I was also rooting for my favorite team last night. and here's a note to all the podcasters out there.

Don't go to a sporting event that you care about the night before you have to record. I'm being honest with you. I think it's kind of an improvement. There's this register. There's a sexiness. There's a gravitus that you're bringing to this show today. When you talk about Al Green, you've got to keep it sexy. And that's what I'm doing.

You're in character. I believe it. So, Diallo, before we dive into breaking down the song, let's stay together. I want to ask you first, what does this song and Al Green, the singer? What do they mean to you? I'm so excited to do the song. I mean, like, Al Green is one of the best vocalists we've, ever covered on the show. We have the stems. Can't wait to hear those vocals. It's a song that we've

heard a million times, but have we heard it like this? I don't think so. Also, I really appreciate the individual instrumentation. This is one of those songs that's like masterfully, masterfully produced. Absolutely. Everything has its place, everything in its right place. And I think you're right. I think carceting back to the earliest days of the podcast, you know, it's kind of fun. This is our 50th episode. I love the fact that every episode is different. I love the fact that you and I approach this on the whole team. We approach this kind of like we do as DJs where it's like we want the balance of artists from one era to the next one genre. I agree. It's almost like we've been like DJing a wedding where there's like a big age. A year long wedding. Exactly.

50 hours of a wedding. Like there's a big age range. There are people with all kinds of tastes. And like we try to like move around the musical map. Right. And we had not done Al Green. And I felt like it was time for Al Green. And hopefully we haven't cleared the dance floor yet. Hopefully this won't be the episode. But seriously. this episode, I think we both agreed. We wanted to do a song. We love every episode, was the point of my bringing up this being our 50th one, and they're all different.

And sometimes we go off on tangents, and we talk about interpolations and connections. Every now and then. We'll talk about our personal connections. We'll do all that a little bit on this episode, but we also really wanted to dig deep into those stems. We really want to linger in the beauty of the drums, the bass, the guitar, the organ, and those vocals.

And what a perfect song to do that on. Absolutely. It's an incredible song. And the pure musical joy this song brings us is undeniable. Joy is such the word of the moment, and I'm feeling it, and what a perfect song for that moment. Look, this is a really well-known song. I'm not trying to pretend like it's an also ran. It was the number one R&B song of 1972. It spent nine straight weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot Soul singles charts. It was the first of six number one soul records, LPs in a row that Al Green had, and it was voted one of the hundred best songs of

the 20th century twice by NPR and by Rolling Stones. So it's a very well-known song. Look, the man had a total of 13 top 40 hits up until 1976, and then he just quit. He quit making, he quit the music industry. He left it all behind for the ministry and became a preacher. He pulled a mace. He pulled a mace. And to be clear, he still continued to record material as a preacher.

Absolutely. He continues to make records to this day. He sure does. He has eight Grammys of his 11 come from his gospel records, and they're all wonderful. Look, people know Otis Redding. They know Sam Cooke. They know Marvin Gay. They know these names.

They know the legacy. And they certainly know Al Green, but they know him, I think, slightly less. I think that's fair. Al has been referred to as the last of the great soul singers. He's also been referred to as the Prince of Love and has often been considered basically an underdog in the pantheon of soul. Exactly. But, you know, I feel like Al bridges the gap between deep soul, southern soul and smooth Philadelphia's soul.

Like, these songs don't sound like any. else's songs. And while they kind of incorporate elements of gospel into his music, but his transition from shouting, you know, to that more subducing. And we're going to talk about producer Willie Mitchell, which is a very important part of the sequence. Every episode, we have the sort of unsung or lesser known heroes of the song, and Willie Mitchell's one or two of them. I feel like it's Willie who sets him apart from his contemporaries. Right. And it happens on this song. That whole idea of his transition from a sort of shoutier era of soul, R&B. You can picture James Brown on his knees, please, please, please.

And the Sam Cook, and, I mean, clearly there's also Otis Redding. There's different ways of performing this music, but Al Green in his mind is more on the shoddy side of things. And in the course of making this song happen, part of why it took so long was that he was finding his voice and literally making that transition from

the shoddy or pre-tier side to a more subdued to the Marvin Gaye thing, to the kind of soltery or sexier thing. And by the way, it's interesting to think about the fact that his career has this transition in the 70s when he goes back to preaching. Maybe he missed the shoutiness. Maybe he enjoyed it so much. He's like, look, I like this little chapter where I have all these sexy hit records, but I wanted to shout at people again. But yeah, in the early 70s, Al had a string of, he had five consecutive hits,

including tired of being alone, you ought to be with me, and he was considered just an R&B superstar, dare I say, a sex symbol, often compared to Marvin Gay. By the way, let's get it on, came a year after, let's stay together, you know, the two sexy let's songs. So, but there might have in some little bit of rivalry between the two. I didn't know until we started prepping this episode. I don't think of them as rivals. Yeah. But apparently there's like some history there between Marvin Gay and Al Green.

It would make sense in that moment that two of them were a huge cruning R&B soul singers with big hits and maybe there's a little bit of a rivalry. That would make sense. You were telling me about a 2008 interview in a Rolling Stone. Al was interviewed. He goes, look, he was asked if they ever did a duet, if him and Marvin Gay ever did a duet. And Al said, very diplomatically, I would like to say yes, but that never happened. in those days, people didn't sing together like they do now.

I met Marvin once in New Jersey. I went to his hotel, and he was chilling in bed. He was like, let's stay together. He's kicking butt out there. And I said, well, let's get it on ain't bad. By the way, we have to shout out Obama singing, Let's Stay Together. This happened at the Apollo Theater in 2012.

It's one of my favorite moments. I'm so in love. He was a sexy man. He's a very sexy man. off, a lot of singers can't find the key right off the bat. He found the note. I worked with Obama when I was a writer of Jimmy Fallon, and we did slow jam the news with him. And we did not have to coach him either on the comedy or on hitting the notes.

That man can sing. He's funny, too. And he's got comedic timing. He's got timing. Is this a career highlight? Or like a life highlight. It's a life highlight. It's kind of a life highlight.

Did you talk to him? What was it like hanging out of Obama? Yeah. He was just like, yo, bjure. Great to see him. Let's talk about where this living soul legend came from. Al Green was born in Arkansas. He's from a big religious family that sang gospel music.

And when Al's family moved to Michigan, when he was a child, he sang in a group with his siblings called The Green Brothers. Here's my favorite part of the story. When he was a teenager, his dad kicked him out of the group and the house for listening to secular music. Specifically, that rambunctious R&B singer, Jackie Wilson. After that, Al. left home, traveled across the country, with some friends on the Chitland circuit. And they created their own group, Al Green and the Soulmates.

They had some success in the late 60s with a song called Backup Train. But after touring with the Soulmates, he goes to Memphis. Memphis. Let's talk about Memphis for a second. So one of the reasons why I was so pumped preparing for this episode is it gave me the chance to go down a million rabbit holes of this era and place. In other words, late 60s Southern Seoul, Memphis, Tennessee, in particular. Soulsville, USA. We're going to talk about not one, but two record labels. This is a tale of two record labels. And I love this music so much. It informs me. I was given a cassette tape back in the day of mixtapes.

It was called Solo. My friend Eve put Sol, S-O-U-L, and then Dash O. And it was all this stuff from stacks. It was the Marquase, the Barcais. It was Booker T and the M-Gs. And it has just been a big part of what I love ever since. So let's talk about it. Let us talk about Memphis and let us talk about Stax Records and High Records. So it's the late 60s. I'm setting the scene. And by the way, Staxx comes from a white brother and sister duo named Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton. Staxton. Staxx comes from the first two letters of both of their last name. So Stuart and Axton Stax. It was modeled after Motown. They were trying to do that thing where you get a backing band and you get a recording studio. you kind of develop a sound, and then you have a bunch of singers on top, bunch of artists on top, and that's exactly what they did.

And this is going to be relevant in the second because it's what somebody else who's part of this story did himself with a second record label. But first, it bears mentioning because there's a lot of rotating band members and artists within stacks, but also from stacks to high records, which is Al Green's record label. Actually, it begins with the Marquays. And if you don't know who the Marquets are, they're incredible. They had this huge hit in 1961 called Last Night. Just one thing to point out, it's just like it's basic blues chords.

It's really simple. There's no vocals. This is the beginning of their idea of let's have an instrumental core. And then we'll add singers later. Well, they hadn't added the singers quite yet, except when he says, so that's how you like save a little money. Don't hire a singer. You just have someone from the band.

They all stopped playing and someone raised. their hand and that's who says the one line, the one lyric. Tequila, right? It's kind of a 60s thing to do that with instrumental music. So the big band, they actually morph into Booker T and the MGs. Again, there's a rotating cast of musicians and they sort of have different names. It's a bit like P-Funk, where sometimes the same George Clinton musicians are Parliament, sometimes they're funkadelic, that's happening here. But the big hit from 1962, which puts stacks on the map after that song, is this one. This is Green Onions, and you've heard this one a million times before, and you can never get sick of it because it's just that good.

1962, Booker T and the MGs. But yeah, no, the Hammond organ, huge part of soul, huge part of the sound of soul music of this era. And in this geography, in Memphis, it's showing up on all these records. Booker T and the MGs are backing up Wilson Pickett, they're backing up Otis Redding, they're backing up Sam and Dave.

When you hear all of these Stacks Records hits, you're hearing the instrumental prowess of Donald Duck Dunn and Booker T and Al Jackson, on drums, who also plays into this story. We'll be talking about him in just a minute. So let's switch gears over for a second to this second, slightly lesser known record label, also in Memphis, also in the same time period,

and it's called High Records. So Dialla, you mentioned Willie Mitchell early in this episode. I did. Big part of this story. So Willie Mitchell was a producer, co-writer, trumpeter, and songwriter. He was an artist himself. He's one of the first signings to High Records,

and he releases a couple of single that do pretty well, decently well, I'd say, but they're great. That was part of the rabbit hole I went down was sort of re-discovering this guy's catalog. Let me play one of the songs for you. This is Grooven from 1967 by Willie Mitchell. Wow.

You recognize it? Absolutely. When the emcees came and tore about the... Yo, that's a jazz sample. Let's hear it. This liquid sores. So satisfying. To the what, to the what, to the what?

Yeah, that's one of my favorite song. Well, it's interesting. Part of what he's building high records to differentiate, basically it's no longer the Blues 1,4,5, which we were just hearing when I was playing those Stacks records. He's doing these new kind of, he's bringing basically jazz harmony into the mix. So it's still the sounds, the bass, the drums.

It's the sound of soul and R&B and the late 60s. All of that deliciousness of the South is being baked into his records. But he's adding, he's making new choices with things like chord changing. And that finds its way into the Al Green song, as we'll be pointing out in just a minute. So that's Willie Mitchell as an artist. He eventually takes over high records and becomes the in-house songwriter and main producer. And he borrows the model from Stacks Records of having an in-house band. In this case, he finds these three brothers called the Hodges Brothers.

And he finds another drummer, Howard Grimes, and that becomes the core of his operation. And they're underneath the hit records that he's putting out under high records, one of which is this one from 1973. It's Anne Peebles. I can't stand the rain. Wow. Now that we know that there's a through line between that song and Al Green, it all makes sense.

And by the way, someone should sample that song. It's really catchy. You think? How about this? I mean, props to Timberland, because, like, as much as I like the end people's, his drums definitely make a huge difference on that song. They make him sound modern, and obviously, Nissy does what Nissy does best. Absolutely. Be Nissy.

And, yeah, I mean, it's so interesting hearing these songs back to back because it is the same instruments, the same musicians, the same studio. the same producer. And even, I mean, I was hearing the same tempo. Like, it's the same vibe. A lot of these Al Green songs are kind of in this 100 BPM rain, which is a thing. Which is perfect for hip-hop. Because at that time, most hip-hop is between, I'd say, like, 90 BPM and like 110. Right.

I can't stand the rain. I love that song. I have a rain playlist. Every time it rains, I'm so, I literally go to my rain playlist. It's got this, it's got your rhythmics, it's got the Beatles. but it starts with this and then it goes into the sea. What about garbage? Garbage is in that.

Okay. Happy when it rains. But I did just learn that John Lennon called it, quote, the best song ever. John Lennon thought, and Ebles, I can't stand the rain, was the best song ever. Amazing. It's pretty amazing. Kudos coming from him. That's actually super cool about John Lennon because Al covered the Beatles in one of my favorite

beetle covers of all time. Play it. So good. I've never heard this. and I love it. One of my favorite things is he never really gets around to say in the word hand. Hold you! It's implied.

It's implied. The shape is there. It's in the middle. He knew people to the song. He was like, you know what? I'm not going to sing the whole chorus. Just to bring it all back full circle and bring it back to Al. Willie Mitchell meets Al Green in Texas.

He's hearing him perform and says, I can make you a star in two years. And Al Green goes, that's too long. But he does it anyway. But two years is a long time when you're trying to make a day to day, when you're like touring the Chitlin circuit. It's like there's not a lot of money, but the money in this era is coming from hits, the real big money. And they set out together, they swung,

and they hit a bunch of grand slams with the hits that we're about to come together. And not at first, though. First two albums, not a hit. But it's off the third album that he delivers tired of being alone. And that song is what paves the way for Let's Stay Together. But tired of being alone, it's great song. Let's hear it. I'm hearing all these little things that are such Willie Mitchellisms.

Or at this point, maybe they've all fused their musicianship because it's Willie Mitchell, the producer, with the three brothers and the band. But I'm hearing all these interesting choices, like an extra bar to extend. Like all of these things we talked about in the Burt Backrack era, a lot of this stuff is coming slightly maybe more from jazz choices with arrangements and harmony than with like.

blues and rock which you know we got 12 bar blues which has three chords so it's interesting because I'm hearing it now as we go through Al's catalog I'm like oh I'm hearing I'm hearing these little choices little subtle choices and that paved the way for their big success the song we're talking about today let's stay together let's stay together is Al's fourth studio album and the title track it's amazing it's actually Al's only number one single but what a single it peaked at number eight on the pop albums chart and became the first of his six albums to hit number one on the soul album chart.

I really like this article I ran by Pitchfork from 2009. It says the genius of Green's performance is that it sounds like he's whispering to the person on the pillow next to him. He's not shouting it out to the neighbors next door. It's an amazing song. And we have the stems. After the break. We'll break down.

Let's stay together and listen to those sweet, sweet falsetto stems. We'll be right back. Welcome back to one song, Luxury. Walk us through it. Tell us how did this song get made? All right, we've already laid the groundwork for the three main characters in this story. As far as the songwriting and producing is concerned, it's literally a three-way split between our good friend Willie Mitchell, producer and head of high records. Al Jackson Jr., who is Booker T's drummer over there at Stax Records, but he's also the drummer on this tune.

The interplay between these two record labels is really important and interesting. And Al Green. Now, the three of them split to publishing three ways. technically Al Green, since it's 33.33, gets the 33.34, because someone's got to get that four. But it's basically an even split between the three of them. So Al Green talked about how the three of them worked together in an interview that I found from 1978. He said, the drummer, Al Jackson, interestingly, would come up with rhythmically placing the syllables of what he's singing. So it would be him that had creative ways of syncopating, for example, the let's stay together.

loving you weather. This is another one of those songs like Ghostbusters that was written in 15 minutes. It was written in 15 minutes. It was this team. Sometimes you just can't overthink it. Can't overthink it. It starts with Willie Mitchell.

He'd write the music. Al Green would go off and do the lyrics and then Al Jackson would help rhythmically find exactly the right cadence. He felt like they were rushing. Yeah. And he actually asked that they'd never put this song out. Crazy.

And as we'll talk about in a second when we get into the stems, when it came time to actually sing it, all of that quickness that took place in the songwriting, we elongate the process to get to the recording. It took quite some time to get to that final vocal. I'm so excited to talk about the stems here because I feel like, look, Phil Spector,

he always gets his props for doing the Phil Specter, Walla Sound. But like, there are a ton of black producers at this time who we just, we don't know their names, and they have, like, such a signature sound. They have such a signature sound. way of producing the song. Willie Mitchell's one of those people. So I can't wait to get into these instruments. Where do you want to start? You want to start with the drums?

Let's start with the drums, my friend. So before we dig in, I just want to say that the single version of the song is three minutes and 15 seconds. There is on the greatest hits, a 4-minute and 45-second version. I have the actual recording. I got five minutes and 10 seconds, which is really cool, which means we get to like, towards the end, I'll play some of the stuff that like is after the fade. So, like, you can't hear it. Because William Mitchell talks in an interview.

He's like, hey, once you get to the the top of the mountain. You get out of there. Just fade out. Yeah, yeah. But today we're not fading. We're not going to fade out. No fading today. The song is recorded at Royal Recording Studio, Memphis, Tennessee, and it came out in November 1971. The basic tracks are all cut with the band playing together. And as I alluded to earlier, it's this core group of Al Jackson, the Hodges Brothers, and a few others. So we'll get into that in a second. But let's start with third co-writer on the song, Al Jackson Jr., again from Booker T and the MGs and the Mark Hay's the Stacks house band, and he's also in the High Records House band. And here he is playing

really restrained, really simple stuff. And there was one surprise. I wonder if anyone else will be surprised by this when you hear it in the mix. So slow, so restrained. That's the only time we hear this ride beat. And then we go into the verse. By the way, that is like a quintessential beat. You can literally play that on like a name that song. kind of show. And that could be like, my first thought, Supersonic by Oasis. Okay. It works for that too. It's a basic kick, snare, eighth note high hat, nothing fancy. But something about the nothing fancy as I was listening to the stems really struck me. First of all, I'll just play a few of the beats. So you heard that ride beat in the beginning

for the verses he goes into that basic high hat thing. And this is an eight track recording. So you're going to hear a little bit of guitar and organ as. well, but I want to play for you the percussion, because there's a second drummer, Howard Grimes, who again was another Stax drummer, and he was usually the main high records drummer, except apparently when they knew they were recording a hit song, they gave it to Al Jackson. So Howard Grimes is on here, and he's playing conga percussion. It's not Tom's. This whole time, I thought this beat was like, don't do to get on the Tom's, but it's not. It's drummer number two, Howard Grimes, and he's playing this. I'll play it isolated, then I'll add the drums back.

And here's the full beat. This whole time, I thought it was kind of like big love by Fleetwood Mac. I heard his hands. It's just, it's like Big Love by Fleetwood Mac or Kate Bush running up that hill. They both had a boom, but da, boom, but da, but da, but what's really cool is I found this story that the engineer and mixer Terry Manning tells where apparently the two of them were right next to each other in the studio, both Al Jackson Jr. on drums and Howard Grimes on percussion.

They were both playing live. And Howard was watching Al and playing exactly. in sync as he could see the snare hit, he would play right around it, which is why it sounds like one player. I thought that was really powerful. It's two guys and all these years. I thought that was just one drum performance. So when we get to the pre-chorus, he digs into a Motown beat, which is the snare on every downbeat. It sounds like this. So restrained. So pocket. It's 102 BPM. Not a lot going on in the drum beat in terms of variations. In fact, I literally went through there's just a couple moments where he throws in one little Tom.

I'll play that one for you. It's just a fun, rare thing. No fills? No real fills, except like, unless you consider this a fill. That's it. One little with a big ring on it. Listen again. It's great. It's so restrained.

And I found one crash ride, the entire song. He plays the ride symbol at the beginning. And then he never plays that beat again. It's only at the beginning. And then he plays, I can only find one crash. And here it is. That's it. Where does that come in the song?

I was trying to figure it out. So I'll play that crash for you in the mix with just the vocals and drums so you can hear it. Almost seems like it was a mistake. It's so subtle. I mean, look. Why the crash there? You know what? I've been thinking about this again.

I mentioned that. Because that's not even the only time he sings that lyric. It's a decision that's kind of jazz. It's kind of in the moment. It's reacting to what's happening. And this is like in a period where most recorded songs are recorded the whole way through. Right. They're not doing a lot of like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

The vocals are overdub as are the strings and horns and backing vocals. But the core bass, drums, keyboards. They're just playing the whole song the whole way through. The brothers in Al Jackson and Howard are playing. The five-piece band is playing all the way through the five minutes beginning to end. Makes sense. And again, the restraint and then these choices of just one Tom here and there. The Tom happens a handful of times.

The crash the one time, I just love this performance. It's so interesting to me how spare and consistent it is. Let's talk about the bass. Let's talk about the bass. So we got Hodges' brother number one. This is Leroy Hodges on bass guitar. And I will play a little bit isolated and then add some drums for context. By the way, that bass line is so like kind of my girl, right?

Again, chill. I didn't realize the bass was doing that much. Yeah. It's interesting. There's a couple of little run-ups. little fills, little melodic stuff. Again, in the world of stacks and high, both of these record labels are modeling themselves after Motown. Motown is the big Kahuna over in Detroit. The idea of modeling something with a single recording studio, the single group of artists, single group of songwriters,

so you have a unique, consistent sound, and then you have different artists on top, Supremes, you know, et cetera. And they're all listening to James Jamerson, who's the bass player, like the classic melodic bass player. Can you say a little bit more about James Jamerson? Yeah, no, James Jamerson is most bass players, one of their biggest heroes. He, if not invented melodic bass, he's certainly on all those early 60s Motown recordings

where the bass is a big part of it, not just playing the roots, not just playing roots in fifths maybe, which would be kind of more common in the era. And he's adding melodic figures, like singable, hummable things. Like, Like things like that where you can go away and it's sort of like a riff.

It's kind of like a melody. He's doing that all throughout the Motown catalog. Huge influence on other bass players. A great story I remember reading about Paul McCartney in the mid-60s when they're doing Strawberry Fields and Penny Lane and Paperback writer, kind of this era, he demands that his engineer Jeff Emmerich get him to sound like James Jamerson. He's like, I want to sound like that, man. I want the sounds, I want to play that stuff, I want to be heard.

So big influence on all the, on all the bass players of this era, famously influenced Paul McCartney's melodic bass lines. So definitely I'm hearing a little bit of that melodic feel thing happening here in the bass. And he was also one of the Funk Brothers, wasn't he? He was one of the Funk Brothers, exactly. And the Funk Brothers are a model for all the house bands that came after them, like at Stacks and High. The first half of the song, he's kind of restrained with a little bit of

every now and then a fill, every now and then a little melody, and he throws in a couple of interesting moments that I'll play for you now. This is where he kind of adds a second note, basically a chord on the bass, which is unusual. I'll play that for you. Right here. So he just up the octave and it's a third, just it's a chord on the base. Just a little thing kind of like Al Jackson threw in that little tom,

these little moments, maybe just to keep themselves interested across playing the song for five minutes. And then to your point, D'allel, towards the end of the track around three-minute mark, where, again, on the single version, it's fading out. But that's just when our man, Leroy, is starting to get a little funkier. He starts to throw some more stuff in there. I love it. So he's throwing in some more 16th notes. He's just having fun with it and getting funky. Well, let's get into the instruments, again, since it's only eight tracks, and half of them are vocals.

The rest of the instruments are all on one stick. Exactly right. So here we go. We have guitar, organ, and percussion all baked together. And this is Teeny Hodge is on guitar, brother of Leroy on bass, and his brother, Charles, is playing that Hammond B3. The organ is just playing long notes, legato. And the guitar is playing these arpeggios.

Now, you can definitely hear that. That's the Hammond sound right there. That descending scale right there is so beautiful. You feel it. He's resigned to love the person he's in love with. And the walk-up that comes right after it so they can do it again is also satisfying. So we're going to walk back up so we can descend again. Here's that walk up.

By the way, in the descending thing, I'm not trying to call anyone out. This just kind of proves this just kind of- Call them out. Call them out. This just kind of speaks to the method of recording at the time and the tolerance for imperfection. There's something happening in the organ that doesn't seem right to me. Like it, it could be, you know what, some music theorist out there with some like crazy-

By the way, you sound like the person who gives like Yosemite, National Park like two stars. What? No, like all the national parks have like these star ratings on Yelp. And people are like, how are you going to give Yosemite two stars? Like, can you do better? This is God's template. To me, I hear what you're saying, but the reason why I like to call these things out is

as a lesson in the opposite of perfectionism, which is in our modern era. Listen to this massive hit song with 50 years of history. And there's a little glitch. There's a little clam. in the organ in this one section. Let's listen. Like, that wasn't quite right. Now, again, with the ears of a Berkeley or Oberlin, you know,

musicologist, you know, worst ears in the play. That's a jazz chord, technically. There's a 13th. I don't know, you know what I'm saying? Like, you can probably find, Jacob Collier could find the right chord. Could tell me what's going on here.

But I think it's just a little clam and they just left it. Collier ain't got, let's stay together. He ain't got to stay together. And here it is, here's another wrong. This is what makes me think it's a mistake, because he makes it, he makes a different mistake the second time around. Here it is. You can kind of hear it in the mix.

It's just a little glitch. It's okay. Just leave it alone. Let's keep going. Let's finish the song. This is why I like humans and not AI. Because AI will hit that note perfectly. Listen, in the mix, I'll bring some other instruments back,

and you won't even notice that little minor moment. I don't know. I just had a little fun thinking about Jacob Collier saying, actually, that's a 17th on top of a 15th, on top of a 52nd note. making up notes. Because what I love about Jacob Collier is that he does have this idea, which I believe is true,

which is you can kind of make anything work with anything else. It's all context. It's what do you do next? What did you do before? Which is very jazz. It's very, I don't know, Miles Davis. You know, there's no such thing as a wrong note.

It's only did you not cover it up a moment later with something that gave it context. So going back for a second to Mr. Willie Mitchell and his jazz background, there's a moment here I want to play for you because there's this kind of like foam. modulation. First of all, the chords on this song are far from intuitive. There's all these wonderful surprises. And there's this moment here which is kind of like, to my ears, a modulation

fake out. You think you're moving to a new key, but then you come back again. I'll just play it for you. And then I'll talk about it on the other side. And we go up, half step, but then we come back down. Then we go back up. And we stay there, but then we go right back to the same chords of the chorus. That's super sophisticated stuff. It's fun. And by the way, that, that sort of back and forth, you know, why it sounds like something that could have been sampled. Yeah. By hip hop if we had the stems.

Yeah. Definitely. That's definitely something to use for something else. Well, he talks about how he consciously, this is Willie Mitchell, producer and co-writer, tried, quote, says he, quote, tried to write some jazz chords and get another sound for Al, because he said, a song shouldn't be in one place. It should be like climbing a mountain. And when you don't have any more elevation, you fade it out or cut it off. And that really makes so much sense.

I feel like knowing who Willie Mitchell was, his background as a trumpeter and jazz player, and then just listening back to the song's chords, the fact that it's sort of hidden inside of this soul song, inside of this pop song, this combination of gospel and funk and soul and R&B all in one, it's got these jazz underpinnings that are sort of little secret things if you know to listen for them.

I thought that was a really fun discovery for me when I was going through this. No, it's very cool. It's very cool. There are some horns. on this song. Are those played by Willie Mitchell? Interestingly enough, in spite of him being a horn player,

he got the Memphis horns to play. There are another Stax Records borrowing. This is Wayne Jackson on trumpet, Andrew Love on Tenor Sacks. It also might include his nephew, Willie Mitchell's nephew James. It's unclear some of the credits were a little vague about this,

whether he was involved. And quite possibly Charles Chalmers, who's one of the background vocalists, for now, let's just play for you, and interesting thing to notice is how sparse and simple these horn lines are. So we start the song with The Famous. They have one moment, which I'll play Isolated and then show you in the mix. Just a little punctuation mark, and here's where that happens.

Ooh, baby. Let's. And that's it for that moment. They just happened twice there. And one last time they come in. Actually, I'll go backwards. Don't they come in for... Yeah, see if in your mind, can you find it?

Time's a good or bad. I think our minds, I certainly think that my mind played a trick on me and thinking the horns were far more prominent and frequent in the song. But they do come in in the chorus here. I'll play it for you in the mix and then I'll isolate it. I'll kind of do it backwards from how we usually do it, just so you'll know where we are, because it's just these syncopated stabs.

On the end of the beat instead of the downbeat, and I'll just, here they are. No, it's crazy. And towards the end, those two parts we've been hearing come, and they repeat back and forth a few times. But that's the only horn stuff happening in the song. The sparseness really strikes me from one instrument to the next, the simplicity, the like subtleness and just the restraint.

Like, no one's, like, freaking out and making sure, like, building bombast. It's kind of the opposite of, like, the Phil Spector wall of sound. It's a wall of silence. It's almost like the wall of sparse. The wall of sparse, better than Wall of Silence. Let's use that. Willie Mitchell and his wall of sparse.

Willie Mitchell describes his arrangement style as basically he thinks of all the instruments like they're in conversation with each other. So he goes, there's a quote I found where he said, the instruments are all in and out all the time. It's never horns, horns, horns, horns, or organ, organ, organ. I think the horns, when they say something, it's like people talking. That's the way I think of horns.

The horns talk to the bass. The bass talk to the drums. The singers talk to everybody. That's the way I think of a round. record. One of the signature sounds on the song is the strings. Tell us about it. Strings, similar to the horns. They're definitely pretty present on the song and slightly more present than the horns. But when you listen back, again, these are subtle lines and they're not there as often as you think. But it does start with the strings. This is, by the way, the Memphis

Symphony Orchestra. I don't know which members were there. We don't have their names, but led by Noel Gilbert, and we think we've got half dozen violins, maybe a couple of violas and a cello. What's interesting to me is we're listening now in the room together, and I'm seeing how much is happening in this first 15 seconds, that intro, and then it never really happens the same way again. But it sets the stage because you're hearing everything you'll eventually hear. You're hearing the strings. You're hearing the horns.

You're hearing the percussion. You're hearing the bass. You're hearing the drums play this one beat. Everything is happening. And then a lot of these things never happened very much later, but your mind maybe holds on to having heard them at the beginning. interesting kind of psychological effect. It's almost like he started at the mountain.

And then he was like, let's start here. And let's take it all the way down to the bottom and walk back up. Mountain analogy. I love it. It's a great interview, guys. If you look up Willie Mitchell on YouTube, there's a great interview they did with him. I assume it's sometime in the 1980s. But he really walks you through the process.

And he's no longer with us. He died in 2010. But he seems like just a really cool. dude. Yeah, undersung fella, given the genius of production and songwriting we're hearing here. And considering, like, how must it feel to be him? You know, like, his, the guy he finds, you know, the star who, you know, he's attached to drops out pretty early in the game. And, you know, we'd have to take a look at some of his other credits. He has some other credits. But, like, you know, that's, that's got to be tough. Yeah, that was, that was definitely the biggest,

the biggest hit of his career. Well, let's get into some more strings. this is happening during the verse. What's really interesting about this is that the strings are really kind of just laying down a pad. It's just a legato for two whole bars. It's unchanging. So just kind of an underpinning, kind of mirroring what the organ is also doing to a degree.

I'll play that for you in the mix, so you can hear where we are. And then in the bridge, it does something a little different. It's a unison thing with kind of octave unison. Here that is. This is the good, bad, happy, sad part. And it's kind of mirroring what's happening. and the other instruments, so I'll bring them in two. Wow.

There's that fake out. Yeah. It goes hi, but they get sad again. It's like, nah-uh, uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-uh. There's a certain melancholy. Like, it's a beautiful song. I mean, you had to constantly remind yourself, oh, this song is about love. Yeah.

But it could have easily been a very sad song. Yeah. I think you're right. The presence of those strings really gives it that second emotion. That's the second melancholy, like you're saying is a good word for it. Now we get to the vocals. And the Reverend Al Green has one, has one of the best voices of all time.

So where do you want to start with this? Well, as many people have noticed, but not everybody. The song starts with that little whisper. Iconic whisper. Iconic whisper. But by the way, he's not the only person whispering there. He's not. You know, I'm going to tease a little bit of the backing vocals.

We don't have to do everything in order. Let's just hear Al first, and then he had a little help. Here's Al Green's opening whisperer. Let's stay to Calma. There's so much sauce to it because he's got the accent. Yeah. It's sexy. But who else is on them?

Well, the backing vocals come from, and here this might be a surprise to some people. This is a couple of sisters, Sandy and Donna Rhodes and Charles Chalmers, who was married to Sandy at the time. Every time you say Chalmers, I think about Superintendent Chalmers from The Simpsons. I mean, like, this is really messing me up. But go ahead. Here's their layering of vocals. It's kind of a funny place to start because it's just them whispering.

We'll hear more of them in just a moment. So in the mix. Here's all the whispering. Let's stay together. No hard are on together. Well, interesting, you should say that because the... But they're from the South. These backing vocalists are all white, which I think not everyone knows.

What? And that's what's going on here. So let's... Wait, wait, wait, wait, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. We're something jumping around here. Al Green's backing vocals are some white folks. There are three white folks, two sisters and a husband.

That's interesting. I would have never guessed. We're going to listen to more of these white backing vocalists, just a second. Let's get back to the king, Al Green, the preacher, the reverend. And here's Al Green starting the song. A lot of space. I'm so in love with you. Wow.

Whatever you want to do is all right with me. There's not a no way. out of place. No. You kind of have to hear the whole thing. Let's back up for a second and talk about how we got here, because it was not easy. It was not easy to get to that vocal. There's a whole bunch of stories about how as easy as it was, quote unquote, to write the song, as you pointed out, 15 minutes, lyrics, chords, everything.

All that jazz was in there. But Al was struggling to find his voice quite literally in the song, as we alluded to earlier, he was thinking of the Sam Cooke's, of the belting, of the soul of the preaching. and he was bringing that to this song and Mitchell kept on asking him to sing softer. He kept on saying this isn't the right basically character, the right tone for this song

and Al Green kept on saying but it sounds too little. He thought his own voice he didn't quite understand what Mitchell was going for here. So they had it back and forth and Mitchell kept saying how soft can you say it and stay in tune? Stop screaming. Just find your voice let the song happen,

it ooze out. I love that line. That's literally a quote from him. Let it ooze out and just let it be. That's so interesting to me from an acting point of view because I feel like theater actors, you know, they're selling it to the back of the theater. And yet, you know, my example is always Jack Bauer on 24. Jack Bauer whispers everything because it's on TV and he can. You know, so it's always like, the terrorists are not going to get away with this. That is such a perfect. That would not work on Broadway. I can't tell you how perfect that analogy is, because part of this comes from the legacy, first of all, microphones. And there's a microphone that is a big part of this story. But the existence of microphones, especially for someone who's used studio microphones to be specific,

for someone who's used to either singing on the road in a nightclub or preaching to a pulpit. He's been on the chinlin circuit. You have to shout to be heard to your exact point, to be heard by the Raptors. In the studio, not only do you not have to, but you have new capabilities that. come from microphones for subtleties in your voice, for subtleties of emotion that come from reducing your volume, quite literally. Think about what Billy Elish does. I mean, like, she's literally this close to doing ASMR.

So much of her character and the number of characters she's able to play is because she's playing with not needing to belt, not needing to shock a con. We have to mention every single episode. So the capabilities that a microphone give you. And what's interesting about this is that Willie Mitchell tells the story of how specific this microphone was chosen. He goes, when I got Al to come to the studio, I knew he was special, and he spent

a few hours trying a whole bunch of different microphones to find the right one for Al Green. And he found it, and it was number nine, he calls it. It's an RCA 77 DX ribbon microphone. A ribbon microphones are really delicate. It's the opposite of what you'll have on stage, which is

usually an SM 58, so you can throw it on the state. Like literally, those are $100 microphones meant to be broken. In the studio, though, you might have like a fancy noyman or like a dynam, a condenser microphone. This is a third type of microphone that's extremely delicate and can pick up the most subtle variations of volume and character. And when he found it, he said, this is the real thing, real soft, warm sound.

When he breathes on the mic, you hear it. And no one else ever use that mic ever again in that studio. He only reserved it. It's for Al and Al alone. I love that. Yeah. The microphone's like the fourth unsung hero of this story. It's a great mic. And the notes it's hitting.

Those notes, yeah. Man, they're, there's a little bit more. Oh, loving you forever is a what I need. Six. We got six notes out of that need. Let's stay together. There's some of that syncopation that Al Jackson brought to it. Loving you weather, weather, times are good or bad, happy or something.

And just to point out as some contrast to all the chord changes that happen in that chorus, all those sort of jazz changes, he's just singing, Good and then, happy. He's sort of saying on the same note. So he's providing a contrast from all the variety going on and the rest of the instruments. All right, I'm going to keep going. Ooh. Yeah.

Just even those little filler thing. Yeah. So sexy. That's here, verse two. Why somebody. Why people break up. Why do they break up? Oh, and turn around and make up.

Oh, but then they turn around. I just came to see. Oh, God. It's aching. The word aching comes to mind. Yeah, it's fantastic. It's so good. I mean, like, I'm just enjoying this ride.

I don't want to stop. And by the way, you know, why do people break up, only just turn around and make up? I mean, I guess they liked each other. Yeah. It's part of the fun. It's part of the, I mean, that sounds like a good relationship. Maybe. It depends on the number of times they broke up.

It's maybe. That's like the fake out of the modulation. It's like, we're going here. No, we're going here. No, we're going here. Part of the fun. It's so good. You'd never do that to me.

Would you, baby? Being around you is all I see. His voice is phenomenal. It's insane. Great voice. But I will also say the notes he is, the notes he is singing. Every choice. The notes he is singing are fantastic.

Like, it's just a great song. Yeah. Like, a lesser singer could still hit these notes, and it would still be a great song. Just the fact that he's Al Green. Yeah. And he's doing so many things on every single note. Like you said, not a wasted note. Yeah.

It just elevates everything to the next level. No, I'm still a little bit speechless. That's why I keep saying, yeah. I will say, listen, I will say, you know, we do the show about once a week, and we listen to vocals about once a week. This is one of the first times we've ever done the show that I could literally, I wish we could just let the whole song play. We're pretty much. And we could just dive into these lyrics and this vocal performance. Like, it's just, it's next level.

It's next level. And nothing feels wasted. No. It's all a little bit different. Every time you stop the music, I get a little anger. I guess I'm like, this is perfection. And this is why we did the episode. This is why we did the episode, 100%.

Yeah. Before we get to those backing vocals, let's play a little bit. I did tease earlier that we have access to some of the post fade-out stuff that maybe is not on the single version. And not everybody has that extended version that was, I think, only released on the original greatest hits that is now out of print. So here we go. Oh, is it really? Yeah.

And here we go with a little bit of preaching. Times are good or bad. I feel sad. If you're mad with me Oh woman don't go away That's Hey Hey

Like that's how he wanted to say Yeah And Willie was like Dude trust me Yeah I think you're right Hey man That sounds like Jackie Wilson

I needed to sound like a You know Green Mitchell production I think you're nailing it And now that we're at the four minute 30 second mark And Mitchell's already like We're already gonna fade out of the point

Just let him say it out Let him do it I'm going to fade out long before this. Exactly. I think you're absolutely right. Because he's got all these, where now we'll get to the five-minute mark, and he's like going crazy.

There's his Jackson. There's the James Brown. That's a different song. It's the Jackie. Yeah. Let's stay together. I mentioned that's how he did it in concert. Yeah.

I think that's when he let loose, yeah, and on the pulpit. That's so funny. That is exactly what Willie was coaching him not to do. Yeah. But then he's like, I'm fading it out anyway. Give them a minute to mess around.

Oh, man, that was super cool. You've never heard. So beautiful. Again, one of the reasons we love doing the show is you've never heard the songs like this. Never. Let's hear some backing vocals. All right. So on backing vocals, we have a singing trio that are known that were known as Rhodes, Chalmers, and Rhodes.

They did a bunch. They're also on Aretha's respect and chain of fools and natural women. You know, all these people should be fucking millionaire. Can I just say, like, every time I hear about, like, the Funk brothers played on this. And this background singer is, Every single song that's in a movie trailer for the last 40 years. Absolutely. These guys should be bigger stars.

These are the people who should be getting paid. I agree. Look, Charles Chalmers, his wife, Sandy, and her sister, Donna are Rhodes-Talmers and Roads. They're the three singers on this track, on the Aretha Stuff. They're also on Dusty Springfield son of a preacher man. They're also on Wilson Pickett's Mustang, Sally. So the backing vocals did two rounds. That's the first one.

All three voices blended. And then they did a second one. merged all of it. So there's a total of six voices that we're hearing right there. Those are some 70s vocals right there, man. And I'll play in. Those are some people who are at home to watch Sanford and Sun. Absolutely. Like if you got guys in the 90s to sing that, it would not sound the same. Bone thugs and harmony. That's your go-to. I was thinking Jodacy. But okay. And here's Al joining them. So here's what it all sounds like together. Because you

Make me feel So brand new Listen to that chord That's jazz, my friends It's also country a little bit It's country and jazz I hear doo-wop I hear guys who are

You know singing on A street corners A corner In Philadelphia We're in some bell bottoms Exactly right Them do sound like They were hanging

In a chow line For the older listeners out there The chow line The theme song To Good Times There okay Oh hang you in a chowl is that what they say that's the line that nobody ever gets i was going to say i never knew that

till you said it hanging in a chow line good time yeah or all those background singers white all of all all there's three background singers doubled so all six of them which are just the three people yes they're all white if you're trying to think that maybe the more they added they started to diversify they sound they sound great shout out shout out to the white background shout out to roads roads chalmers and roads i'll just play a couple more I mean, they're hitting that note hard. That's when they start to belt it. That's when they're letting loose a little bit. They're starting to preach a little bit.

Well, listen, Let's Stay Together has been sampled so many times. So many interpolations. One of my favorite is Master P, The Ghetto Won't Change. It's pretty classic if you're from the South like me. Let's Stay Together has been covered by a ton of artists, at least 95 to count. And listen, it's not just solo in R&B singers. Even though one of the best most well-known covers is by a soul legend, just a legend, Tina Turner, 1983.

This is her cover of Let's Stay Together. What's fun about that is that that one's produced by Martin Ware, formerly of Heaven 17. Oh, I can totally believe that. Human League, yeah. I can totally. And by the way, if you watch the video, the choreography is amazing. Yeah. By the way, I'm going to be completely frank here.

I've never heard that cover before right now. Yeah, that was... Like, I knew Tina Turner in the 80s. Before private dancer, before the big comeback, this kind of set the stage for that. Absolutely. I just, I had never heard that song before. So that was really interesting and fun for me.

It's fun that it's got that humanly connection too. Absolutely. Yeah, that's Martin Ware. And actually, Glenn Gregory is on background vocals. He's also, he is the singer for Heaven 17. As we wrap this up, what would you say as the legacy of Al Green? I just think it's so interesting

that his career is so compressed in time because of his career choice, you know, his career choices. And that kind of does something interesting to make a real time capsule. Al Green's artistic output is a very short, like seven, eight, ten years tops. And obviously, I think that does something to the material as well. It makes it a little more special. He's simultaneously big and lesser known. I think that's really interesting.

Yeah, and I think, look, like you said, he left pop music. He started doing gospel music. He's been doing gospel music ever since. he's alive. Yes. So it's kind of nice to be able to talk to, you know, not him, but like talk to his legacy. He's left an indelible imprint on music. It is undeniable.

And it's important to point out, like, he has returned to secular music a couple of times. He did a collaboration with Annie Lennox in the 80s. He did a song with Lyle Lovett in the 90s. And he did one of my favorite songs of the 2000s. He did a song, not just with John Legend, but a song with Anthony Hamilton. He did a song called, you got the love I need. Can I just say something?

Yeah, that's just a great song. Can I just say I love it when singers come back after like decades and use the same sounds? Yes. Like, that's what we want from them. I'm so glad. I don't want to hear Algreen rap. I don't want to hear like 2008 production, but you could have told me that was like the B side of Let's Stay Together or something like that.

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's kind of cool, but it's like, hey, he's still alive. Let's make one more 1971 sounding record. That's how you should. That's how it should be for comebacks, in my opinion. Okay, luxury. It's time for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut or a hidden gym with you,

the One Song Nation, and with each other, luxury. Do you have a song for us? All right, my song is, this is a discovery that came from researching for this episode. I found this track called Gator Bait by The Gators, and I'll just play it for you. This is just who I am. This is from 1971. This is a New Orleans band, clearly in the same kind of music. but also geographically where the meters are, another one of my favorite bands of all time,

instrumental, funk, it's got a little bit of something to it that's really special. Just when I heard it, I was like, how if I never heard this band before? The endless joy of music discovery, I'd never heard of the Gators, and now I'm going to seek out everything that they've ever recorded because I loved the song Gator Bate by the Gators, 1971. That's super cool. What about you, Diyahua? What's your one more song today?

My One More Song is from a couple of years ago. a song called Be Like You by a British artist named Lyndon J. And I like it because it's very British. It's just a fun song, and I feel like it's a song that only the UK can produce. It's so British sounding. There's something about it. It's not quite two-step or garage, but it's sort of like in that zone. And the sonics of it, like I can hear some like UK crime producer.

Yeah. I'd love to be like at a dark warehouse basement party and let that song come on. As always, if you have an idea for one more song, you can find us. on Instagram and TikTok. You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, DIA-L-L-O, and on TikTok at Diallo-R-O-R-O-R-O. And you can find me on TikTok at LuxuryX-X or Instagram at luxury L-U-X-X-U-R-Y.

You can also watch full episodes of One Song on YouTube. Now, just search One Song podcast. We'd love it if you like and subscribe. And if you made it this far, I think that probably means you like this podcast. So please like us, give us five stars on your favorite podcast platform and share with your friends.

Turn other people on to something that you've enjoyed. Share the love. We really appreciate it. One song nation. One more thing. If you're as obsessed with the making and meaning of popular music the way we are, join us in Las Vegas on August 31st for Heartbeat Weekend.

We'll be taping an episode of this show. It's going to be live and it's going to be free. Check out the link in our bios on our socials. All right, luxury. Help us in this thing. I'm producer, DJ, and musicologist Luxury. And I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes man with a voice, Diyah Riddell.

And this is one song. We'll see you next time.