Take Me to the River: An Autobiography - Softcover

Green, Al; Seay, Davin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1556528108 ISBN 13: 9781556528101

Publisher: Chicago Review Press, 2009

Synopsis

With an extraordinary appeal that has continued unabated since the early 1970s, Al Green remains the quintessential soul man—one of the most enduring, electrifying, and enigmatic artists of our era. But at the very heart of his appeal is the conflict between the devil’s music and God’s calling, a conflict he has wrestled with all his life. This is his story.  Take Me to the River is an inspiring, unsparing, and ultimately transforming autobiography. From a sharecropper’s shack in Jacknash, Arkansas, to the absolute pinnacle of show-business success, it chronicles Al Green’s career in rich detail. This is the whole story—his early days on the gospel and R&B circuits, his fateful encounter with legendary producer Willie Mitchell, his climb to the top of the charts, the attempted murder and suicide scandal that made headlines worldwide, and his decision to become a pastor and found his own church—the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis, Tennessee.  Take Me to the River brings Al Green’s epic spiritual struggle—a story of repentance, redemption, and renewal—to life with all the urgency and immediacy of his music.

About this title

About the Author

Al Green is one of the most popular living gospel and soul music singers and the recipient of the BET Lifetime Achievement Award. Davin Seay is the coauthor of Heart & Soul: A Celebration of Black Music Style in America; Tha Doggfather: The Times, Trials, and Hardcore Truths of Snoop Dogg; and With God on Our Side: One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military.

From Publishers Weekly

Labeled by many as the Last Great Soul Man, Green writes modestly and with great spirit about his career. The bulk of the narrative, written with Seay, concentrates on Green's early life, from his boyhood as a sharecropper's son in Jacknash, Ark., to his family's move to the ghetto in Grand Rapids, Mich., to his desperate pursuit of a singing career. While Green quickly established himself as a neighborhood tough and ladies' man, he never let his reputation as a "badass dude" keep him from singing in the school and church choirs. Choosing between the secular and the sacred proved a constant struggle for Green. In the end, he writes, "I never did develop a preference for one church over the other. To me, shouting at the top of your lungs while hammering on a tambourine or whispering your prayers as the organ softly played were just two different ways of saying the same thing: We're all down here, Lord, doing the best we can." At 29, Green was already an international superstar when he again questioned his path. Ultimately, he opted to "leave behind the glitter and the glamour of the world to seek out a poor and plain existence," buying a church of his own on the outskirts of Memphis and earning a degree as an ordained minister. Not that Green spurned music altogether; he went on to release several gospel records, along with hit singles with the likes of Annie Lennox and country signer Lyle Lovett, and he appeared in a Broadway show. Rather, Green writes, he simply "stopped running after music to give me the meaning and purpose of my life." In the end, Green's is an inspirational story that tells how an "average high school graduate, sometime singer in a hometown soul band, part-time jazz crooner, former car-wash employee and jack of trades" made good. (Sept.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Chicago Review Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1556528108
• ISBN 13: 9781556528101
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 352