412: GETS NEXT TO YOU | AL GREEN

James Hunter at Rolling Stone: Al Green’s first four albums are the beginning of the truly sublime rhythm-and-blues story of the 1970s: It’s a story about one of the most soulful voices in pop history — a rough yet refined tenor — combined with a mystically tight Memphis studio band. For generations of inheritors (from Jodeci to U2) and lovers, Green, producer Willie Mitchell and the five-man Hi Records house band set the benchmark for soul.

“Al Green” means not only the artist but also a sound: a jazz-bred sparseness and life inside a wonderfully clean, accessible groove. 1970’s Green Is Blues doesn’t yet have all this legendary muscle together. It has killer moments: On the attractive ballad “One Woman” or the beachy, horn-warmed, up-tempo “Talk to Me,” the ingredients of the mythic Green-Mitchell relationship exist, but they haven’t fully jelled. A deliberate version of the Box Tops’ “The Letter” is the album’s highlight; avoiding their music’s usual bounce, Green and Mitchell explore a slightly dangerous urban variant of older country blues….

Stephen Thomas Erlewine at AllMusic: After the shaky start of Green Is Blues, Al Green and producer Willie Mitchell established their classic sound with Green's second album, Gets Next to You. The main difference is in the rhythm section. Abandoning the gritty syncopations of deep Southern soul, the Hi Rhythm Section plays it slow and seductive, working a sultry, steady pulse that Green exploits with his remarkable voice. Alternating between Sam Cooke's croon and Otis Redding's shout, Green develops his own distinctive style, and Gets Next to You only touches the surface of its depth. Although the album is filled with wonderful moments, few are as astonishing as Green and Mitchell's reinterpretation of the Temptations' "I Can't Get Next to You," which turns the original inside out.