Al Green, “Loving You,” The Belle Album, 1978
Here’s a damned fine Al Green album you might not own. It’s the first one he produced himself without the help of Willie Mitchell and his normal gang. Here’s Greil Marcus:
This is a completely idiosyncratic album — Green produced it, cowrote all the songs and plays precise acoustic and electric guitar — but it’s hard for me to understand how anyone could find it inaccessible. Its subject matter — God’s grace, and how good it (It?) feels — isn’t pushed; there’s no ad for Green’s ministry on the back cover, and while most of the lyrics are religious, the only song title that even hints at anything beyond the secular realm is “Chariots of Fire.”
When you come to love, in hindsight, an artist with a long, varied career, you tend miss the gems like this. There’s something about this day and age of abundance, when there’s so much you could listen to, that makes me, even with artists I love, not bother tracking stuff like this down because it seems “minor,” and I stick to whatever Allmusic.com tells me are the “classics” worth my time. And lets face it: whether something is a “classic” means nothing as to whether you’ll actually like it. What a stupid mistake to make.
I’ve had the same experience with “minor” Woody Allen movies and recently Kurt Vonnegut’s Bluebeard—not a “classic” necessarily, but solid, enjoyable work that, because it’s an artist you like, is still better than the best stuff from another artist.
Anyways. This is a great album.
Filed under: my listening year 2013
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