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Last year Al Green appeared on the Congo Square stage at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and posed a simple question.

“A lot of people have been wondering if the Reverend still has it,” he said to the rapt audience. I certainly did not have any doubts. Just two years earlier in a stunning show at The Saenger Theater in the same city he provided one of the best hours of music I have ever witnessed.

Who knows what prompted these remarks at Jazz Fest – perhaps some criticism he might have read, maybe a review of a previous show.

“Let’s just see,” he said and then proceeded to hit notes that only he, and very few others, can hit, on some of his classic songs.

In the afternoon sun, dressed in a white suit, he mopped his brow, teased the crowd, threw roses to the ladies and proved that he is an entertainer par excellence. Certainly the greatest singer that I have ever seen.

“Yes!” proclaimed Green enthusiastically to thunderous applause. “Yes! I think he’s still got it!”

Now, Australian audiences have the chance to witness the fact that Al Green has still got it – whatever it is. Finally, with the added impetus of the Sydney Festival, the world’s greatest soul singer will be here. Whatever hype you hear or read about Green’s talent, I have to tell you that it is all true.

Those two New Orleans shows were a reminder that despite the fact that he turned 63 this year, Green’s voice is as potent as it has ever been, his showmanship exceptional and his charisma extraordinary.

“I’m looking forward to coming down and seeing what all the fuss is about,” jokes Green when I mention that fans here are eager to see him here for the first time.

That fuss is a result of numerous classic soul hits dating back to the late ‘60s when the Arkansas-born Green teamed up with producer Willie Mitchell who had hired him for a gig in Texas and decided that his charge would be a star.

The Mitchell-steered Green Is Blues was released in 1969 but it wasn’t until 1971 that the singer’s career exploded.

Al Green Gets Next To You, released in August that year, contained ‘I Can’t Get Next To You,’ ‘Tired Of Being Alone’ and ‘Right Now, Right Now’ – all songs that entered the US R&B charts.

Then ‘Let’s Stay Together’, released on the album of the same name also in 1971, really propelled Green’s career. The song shot to Number One on both the pop and R&B charts while the album raced into the Top 10 on the pop chart.

In the next four years Green was to enjoy another 14 pop chart hits, with half a dozen Number One R&B singles, for songs including ‘I’m Still In Love With You,’ ‘Sha-La-La (Make Me Happy)’ and ‘Here I Am (Come And Take Me)’.

But suddenly things took a turn for the worse. In October 1974 an unhappy girlfriend

assaulted Green by throwing a pan of boiling grits over him, resulting in third degree burns. For the singer it was a message from God and he decided to change his life.

Two years later he became an ordained pastor in the Full Gospel Tabernacle Church in Memphis.

In 1977 Green released The Belle Album, his first without Mitchell and the final album prior to a series of gospel recordings that marked his career in the ‘80s. None of these records were to make the pop album charts, except for 1987’s Soul Survivor, which yielded the brilliant ‘Everything’s Gonna Be Alright’ (which should have been a massive pop hit).

Much as Dylan’s so-called Christian albums were spurned by critics and fans alike – who are now re-discovering the many great songs – Green’s gospel albums also house some long-ignored gems.

Green’s duet with Annie Lennox on ‘Put A Little Love In Your Heart’ (for the film

Scrooged) put him back on the charts and in 1989 he worked with Arthur Baker and scored a hit with ‘The Message Is Love’. The 1995 duet with Lyle Lovett on ‘Funny How Time Slips Away,’ for the Rhythm, Country & Blues album, won him his 11^th Grammy.

In the meantime, he had been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2000 and published his autobiography, Take Me To The River.

In 2003 Green re-united with Willie Mitchell for I Can’t Stop – their first collaboration in nearly two decades. Recapturing that classic Memphis sound, they continued together for Everything’s OK a year later.

Then, in 2008 Green’s chart career was reignited with Lay It Down, co-produced with Ahmir ‘?uestlove’ Thompson from The Roots and featuring guests such as John Legend, Corinne Bailey Rae and Anthony Hamilton.

The legend was back as the album soared into the Top 10.

“Plenty busy, man,” says Green when I suggest that he has got enough dates in America and Europe alone to keep him occupied. “I don’t want to be any busier. Got dates all the way up to July already.”

“He‘s doing pretty good,” says Green when I ask him if he gets a chance to catch up with his mentor Willie Mitchell when he is in Memphis.

“I hope that we can. He wanted to put together a CD and I want to see if he really wants to do it. If he really wants to do then we will. We thought we would be slowing down but instead we are speeding up. It’s a little bit different to what we anticipated.”

Certainly the Green-Mitchell partnership had a special magic to it that transcended the humble Royal Studio. Just around the corner from the Stax Museum, it is not a flash state of the art set up that would even try to compete with more modern studios, but the sound it produces has seldom been replicated for its warmth and feel.

The vocal booth is to one side and contains Green’s favourite RCA ribbon microphone – No.9 – but the classic sound is much more than mere technology.

“If I tell you that then I wouldn’t have no secrets,” says Green, “but I think that Lay It Down album was a good compilation for what me and Willie were doing.”

“The magic? I’m not going to tell you about no magic,” he continues. “We don’t discuss that. We’re talking about no magic. I don’t know about no magic. What magic? That’s what we always throw it off to be. What magic are you talking about? Like the Memphis, Stax or Motown sound – everybody goes, ‘what makes that sound? and everybody goes, ‘what are you talking about? I don’t know’.”

“There is something about it,” he adds. “The Lay It Down album with The Roots band was good. I thought it was great. I thought we should cut some more.

“It was kind of like reinventing yourself a little bit there because the guys tried to cut it as hip hop as they could but the more they played, the more they sang it, the more they did it, the more it sounded like Willie Mitchell.

It was just one of those things.” Green says that they recorded five or six additional tracks during those sessions and that he might finish them at some stage and release them later.

Obviously, religion plays an important part in Green’s life. He tries to be at his church as often as possible when he is not on the road. Visitors come from all over the world to take part in the epic service that features Green’s preaching and singing. 

“Well, you better catch me sometime,” says Green when I tell him I have been to Memphis many times but never made it to his church.

“We have people from all over come to visit this little church,” says Green. “It’s amazing. I don’t know just what it is about this place but they come and they worship and they have a great time.”

Then he admonishes me when I say that if he was at church I’d be there ever week.

“Don’t let a human being be your chief joy or your top aspiration,” he says. “I think maybe there should be another reason for being there other than Al Green, I guarantee that.”

“I think some of that stuff is just great, isn’t it,” says Green of his religious albums.

“We gonna do ‘Everything’s Gonna Be Alright’ when we come.”

As for the dichotomy between the religious and the secular, Green has no problem dealing with it.

“I don’t think that being on stage is the point,” he explains. “The point is a simple message and the message is that God created man and woman and he brought the woman to the man and she became his wife.

“Now that starts something. That starts the household and the family. That starts the ‘Love and Happiness,’ that starts ‘For The Good Times,’ that starts ‘Tired Of Being Alone,’ that starts ‘I’m Still In Love With You’. That starts huggin’ and kissin’, that starts a little champagne and before you know it… dah dah! Hello! You in love again.

“I have a lot of guys from London saying, ‘you know Mr Green, there’s a lot of babies been made during your music’. I say, ‘don’t tell me no more!’ It’s true. The music has a love element in it and it’s about couples and partnerships and the family unit and all that good stuff.”

“You could fall in love 24 hours a day there, boy,” he laughs. “You could fall in love and fall in love again!”

I tell Green that the demand for his shows is such is that he will not be able to retire any time in the near future.

“And because I am an ass-kicker!” he replies.

“I mean when I get on stage we kick ass. And the band knows when Al is on it is on, baby, it is on. We try to do a great show and people kind of realise that he works real hard and it would be good to go see the shows because it is usually fantastic.”

“You cannot ask for more than what we have been given,” he says. “We’ve been dealt a great hand and we’re gonna share that with the people of Australia. We’ve been really blessed.”

Before we finish our chat I promise that I will visit his church next time I am in Memphis.

“Come on over to the church and don’t let us scare you,” he replies and then eerily he shows that he somehow knows more about me than I could have suspected.

“Come on in and sit and enjoy it because we know you’re ain’t gonna get out on the floor and dance, Brian, but whatever you wanna do you’re free to do it.

I’m still not sure I believe in God but I believe in Al Green!

Al Green will be appearing as part of The Sydney Festival and will be doing shows in other cities in January, check the Gig Guide for details.