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1. 1 minute, 33 seconds into 'Call Me (Come Back Home)' 2. 'I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry' 3. 'Your Love is Like the Morning Sun' 4. 'Here I Am (Come and Take Me)' 5. 'Here I Am (Come and Take Me)' 6. 'Funny How Time Slips Away' 7. 'Funny How Time Slips Away' 8. 'Funny How Time Slips Away' 9. 'You Ought To Be With Me' 10. 'Jesus Is Waiting'		XL on ACL: The Many Faces of Al Guh-ree-hee-hee-uhn By Jeff Salamon Austin American-Statesman Sept. 19, 2003 To some people, Al Green wasn't just the greatest soul singer of the '70s , or the greatest soul singer of all time, but the greatest singer ever, period. Fans of Marvin Gaye will object to the first claim, Sam Cooke's acolytes to the second and everyone from the bobby-soxers who swooned over Sinatra to Austin Lyric Opera subscription holders to the third. But the indisputable proof of Green's magnificence can be found on 1972's "Call Me," which is perhaps his greatest album, and surely his most obsessive. "Call Me" was a risky move for Green; its predecessors, "Let's Stay Together" and "Still in Love with You," combined sprightly pop songs and snail's pace ballads into a surefire recipe for commercial success. "Call Me," by contrast, drops virtually all the bright notes; even Al Jackson's crisp drumming can't break the sodden, logy vibe. None of this is indicative of sloth, though. On "Call Me" Green pushed his vocals to a realm of self-pity and embitterment that no other soul singer had ever visited (though Marvin Gaye would come close six years later on his rancorous ode to divorce, "Here My Dear"). His voice is multitracked throughout much of the album, and the overlapping voices give the sense of a man testing out different ways of saying something and deciding that each of them is true but none of them are satisfying. The zenith of all this is Green's epic cover of "Funny How Time Slips Away," which invests Willie Nelson's lyric with a sense of menace no one had ever noticed there. When Green's jilted lover sings, "How's your new love?/I hope he's doing fine," Green stretches out that last word forever. It's not an attempt at virtuosity, � la today's melisma-drunk R&B singers, but the sound of a man who can't decide what he wants the word to mean. Is he trying to feign sincerity? Does he shift register midway through because the pretense seems laughable? Or does he intend his sarcasm to be evident from the start? That "fine" is anything but. Here, as a demonstration of the imagination and extravagance Green lavished upon these songs, we catalog 10 of the most expressive sounds that Al Green deploys on "Call Me." Of course, in the same way that the small rhythmic displacements that mark virtually all African American music can only be approximated in sheet music, our transcriptions of Green's vocalizations are a sorry substitute for the real thing. To hear that, grab a copy of "Call Me" (if you don't already own one) or, better still, see Al Green on Friday night on the Capital Metro Stage. More XL on ACL: • REM: Still Shiny, Still Happy • The Many Faces of Al Green • Stapleton's Sweet Success • Critics' Picks • Live music 101, v. 2 • Liz Phair • Jeff Klein • Raul Malo • Rise of Southern Rock • J.T. Van Zandt • Beth Orton • CD Reviews • Band Schedule • Interactive Stage Layout Map • ACL Fest Index

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