If I had to give a definition for soul music…I would play this song. Something about Al Green’s voice that is so soothing and exciting at the same time. Green originally wrote the song in 1968 and recorded a version while signed to Hi Records. However, the song was initially not released. Green said: “I was toting my song around in my pocket for days on end, saying, ‘Hey, I got a song.’ Finally, at the end of the session, I said, ‘Well, I still got a song.'”
This song was released in 1971 as the first single from his album Al Green Gets Next to You. It was written by Al Green himself, along with Al Jackson Jr. (the drummer for his band, the Hi Rhythm Section). The song became a huge hit and is considered a classic. It has a blend of soul, gospel, and R&B, which did him well in his career.
This song never gets old, and listening to Al’s voice certainly never gets old. This song peaked at #11 on the Billboard 100 and #36 in Canada. Al Green has had twenty songs in the Billboard top 100, eight top 10 songs, and a #1 with Let’s Stay Together. This song was a turning point in his career. This was his first top-twenty hit. Al Green Gets Next to You peaked at #58 on the Billboard Album Charts.
During a 1979 concert in Cincinnati, he fell 12 feet off a stage and barely missed being seriously injured. Already a Christian, preaching in front of his Memphis congregation most every Sunday morning, Green thanked Jesus and walked away from performing, vowing never to return. “The fall was God’s way of saying I had to hurry up,” Green said a decade ago, smack in the middle of The Gospel Years. “I wasn’t moving toward God fast enough.” He has rarely performed live since then outside of his Church.
I’m so tired of being alone, I’m so tired of on my own, Won’t you help me, girl, Just as soon as you can. People say that I’ve found a way, To make you say, That you love me. But baby, You didn’t go for that, Ha, it’s a natural fact, That I want to come back, Show me where it’s at, baby.
I’m so tired of being alone, I’m so tired of on my own, Won’t you help me, girl, Soon as you can. I guess you know that I, uh, I love you so, Even though, You don’t want me no more, Hey, hey, hey, hey I’m cryin’ tears, Through the years, I tell you like it is, Honey, love me if you can.
Ya baby, Tired of being alone here by myself, now I tell ya, I’m tired baby, I’m tired of being all wrapped up late at night, In my dreams, nobody but you, baby. Sometimes I wonder, If you love me like you say you do, You see baby, I, I, I, I’ve been thinking about you, I’ve been wanting to get next to you, baby, Sometimes I hold my arms and I say, Oh baby, yeah, needing you has proven to me, To be my greatest dream, yeah
Awh!
I’m so tired of being alone, I’m so tired of on my own, Sometimes late at night I get to wonderin’ about you baby, Baby, baby, ya ya, baby you’re my heart’s desire
I love this genre of music. I really could put these songs in any order I wanted and it would work. I had to leave so many off…I could easily make this list with 100 different artists but I wanted the page to actually load so you could read it. This is just a partial list…if you like it I could do a part II one day.
James Carr – Pouring Water On A Drowning Man
No…his name is not a household name like the rest of the list but this song just gets to me every single time I listen to it. If you don’t listen to any other song on this post…give this one a try. I dropped Sam Cooke from this list because of Carr but I like this song that much.
His voice and that wonderful guitar. Pouring Water on a Drowning Man charted at #85 on the Billboard 100 and #23 on the R&B Chart in 1966. This song is so easy to listen to. Great guitar sound and Carr’s voice is wonderful. The small intro is worth it. The guitar can sound can seem so deceptively easy but it’s not to be right. He lived in Memphis and was called “the world’s greatest Soul Singer” but he had a bipolar disorder and that made it hard for him to tour because of the depression.
At one time he was mentioned along with Otis Redding and they had the same manager for a while. The guy had a great voice. Check his other music out.
Arthur Conley – Sweet Soul Music
Otis Redding believed in Conley’s talent. In January 1967 Redding and his managers, Phil Walden (future ABB manager) and his brother Alan Walden (future Lynyrd Skynyrd manager) brought Conley to producer Rick Hall’s FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Conley recorded two singles at FAME Studios but they were not successful and Hall did not want to work with Conley anymore.
By this time Otis was fed up and took Conley himself to FAME and used his own band. With Jimmy Johnson Engineering they recorded Sweet Soul Music. It was a million-selling single. It peaked at #2 on the Billboard 100, #2 in the R&B Charts, and #7 in the UK in 1967.
It was written by Conley and Otis Redding. It was based on “Yeah Man” by Sam Cooke and was a tribute to soul singers. The songs mentioned in this song are “Going To A Go-Go,” “Love’s a Hurtin’ Thing,” “Hold On I’m Coming,” “Mustang Sally” and “Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song).” The artists mentioned are Otis, Wilson Pickett, Sam and Dave, James Brown, and Lou Rawls.
Marvin Gaye – Let’s Get It On
I never checked the statistics…but I have to think there had to be a baby explosion nine months after “Let’s Get It On” was released in 1973. Anyone born in 1974 may owe their very existence to this song.
This song’s co-writer Ed Townsend also produced the album with Marvin and co-wrote the three other songs on the first side of the disc, including “Keep Gettin’ It On.” He wrote with Marvin again on songs for Marvin’s 1978 album Here, My Dear.
This song peaked at #1 in the Billboard 100, The guitar and voice are excellent in this song. There is no guessing what this song is about.
Otis Redding – Shake
This song was a highlight when watching the Monterey Pop Festival. Otis had the voice, charisma, and loads of talent. Shake was written and originally recorded by Sam Cooke. Cooke’s version reached #7 on the Billboard 100. Cooke was a huge influence on Otis Redding; along with Shake, Redding also recorded covers of Cooke’s A Change Is Gonna Come, Chain Gang, Cupid, Nothing Can Change This Love, Wonderful World, and You Send Me.
The song peaked at #47 on the Billboard 100 in 1967. Otis was on his way to superstardom. Otis made a huge impact at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival along with The Who, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin.
The Reverend Al Green – Let’s Stay Together
I never tire of hearing his voice. This song almost wasn’t released because Green hated the thin sound of his falsetto. Producer Willie Mitchell said: “The only fight I ever had with him was about ‘Let’s Stay Together,’ because he thought ‘Let’s Stay Together’ was not a hit.” It did pretty well for a song Green didn’t think was a hit.
The song peaked at #1 in the Billboard 100, #7 in the UK, and #14 in Canada in 1972. Let’s Stay Together also spent nine weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart.
It was selected by the Library of Congress as a 2010 addition to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
The great Al Green. I never tire of hearing his voice. This song almost wasn’t released because Al Green hated the thin sound of his falsetto in it. Producer Willie Mitchell said: “The only fight I ever had with him was about ‘Let’s Stay Together,’ because he thought ‘Let’s Stay Together’ was not a hit.” It did pretty well for a song that Green didn’t think was a hit.
The song peaked at #1 in the Billboard 100, #7 in the UK, and #14 in Canada in 1972. Let’s Stay Together also spent nine straight weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot Soul Singles chart.
It was selected by the Library of Congress as a 2010 addition to the National Recording Registry, which selects recordings annually that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant.
From Songfacts
This song is about an unconditional love where you are determined to stick it out through good times and bad. It’s a very popular wedding song.
Al Green wrote the lyrics to this song; the music was written by Al Jackson Jr., and Willie Mitchell. Jackson is a legendary soul drummer who recorded with Booker T. & the MG’s; Mitchell was Green’s producer. Green did about 100 takes before he got one he liked, and even then he wasn’t sure the song was any good. It was Mitchell who set him straight, telling him it “had magic on it.”
This has appeared in such movies as The Ladies’ Man, On the Line, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, and Munich. Perhaps the most famous cinematic use of the song was in the scene from the film Pulp Fiction, where it is playing in the background. It’s on the stereo in the bar, where we first confront Bruce Willis’ poker face while Ving Rhames gives him the “pride only hurts” speech. It’s a relatively quiet scene, so the song really has a chance to set the mood.
According to Rolling Stone magazine’s Top 500 songs, after Willie Mitchell gave Al Green a rough mix of a tune he and drummer Al Jackson had developed, Green wrote the lyrics in 5 minutes. However, Green didn’t want to record the song and for two days he argued with Willie Mitchell before finally agreeing to cut it.
Tina Turner’s 1983 cover of this song revitalized her career, returning her to the charts in both the UK and US for the first time for over a decade. After divorcing Ike Turner in 1976 she jumped on the disco trend with solo albums in 1978 and 1979 that went nowhere. In 1982, she released a cover of The Temptations “Ball Of Confusion” that was produced by the B.E.F. production team, which comprises Heaven 17 members Martyn Ware and Ian Craig Marsh. Turner and her manager Roger Davies liked this direction and enlisted them for more help.
In our interview with Martyn Ware, he recalled: “They said, ‘Would you be interested in writing a song for Private Dancer?’ And I said, ‘Well, we don’t really write for other people.’ We felt a bit self-conscious because we thought that what we did was our particular thing. It wasn’t just an arrogance thing; it was, like, ‘God, how would we start writing a song for Tina Turner?’ Seriously. She was a legend in our eyes. I said, ‘Well, I don’t really feel confident with that, but I really would like to do a cover version, or a couple of cover versions, so we ended up drawing up a shortlist.”
“She was staying in London at the time,” Ware continued, “and the one track I really wanted to do with her was ‘Let’s Stay Together’ because I thought she had turned her back a little bit on her soul roots – she clearly wanted to be a rock singer. I said, ‘Look, as far as I’m concerned Tina, you are still one of the greatest soul singers in the world.’ And I said, ‘What were your influences when you were growing up?’ And she said, ‘Otis Redding, Sam Cooke.’ And I said, ‘How would you feel about “Let’s Stay Together” by Al Green?’ And she jumped at the idea.”
Turner had just signed to Capitol Records, which released her version of “Let’s Stay Together” in the UK. With backing vocals by Glenn Gregory and Martyn Ware of Heaven 17 and a modern production touch supplied by B.E.F., the song took off, rising to #6 in December 1983. Issued in the US, the song became a favorite in New York dance clubs and rose to #26 in March 1984. After it hit in the UK, Capitol commissioned a full album, giving Turner two weeks to record what became [b]Private Dancer[/b], which returned Turner to stardom.
This was used in a television commercial for Tide laundry detergent.
After explaining how he idolized Al Green growing up in Tennessee, Justin Timberlake sang this with the Reverend at the Grammy awards in 2009 with Boyz II Men and Keith Urban joining in the song. This performance was a last-minute addition to the show, as Rihanna and Chris Brown, who were both scheduled to perform, canceled after an altercation the night before.
Barack Obama sang a couple of lines of the song during an appearance on January 19, 2012 at the Apollo Theater in Harlem for a fund-raising event. Al Green was the opening act and as the American president took to the stage, he noted the soul legend’s presence in the audience and surprised his staffers close by with an impromptu spot of crooning. “Those guys didn’t think I would do it,” he joked. “I told you I was going to do it. The Sandman did not come out.”
It wouldn’t be the last time Obama sang in public during his term: In 2015 he sang part of “Amazing Grace” when he delivered the eulogy for Rev. Clementa Pinckney, who was killed by a gunman at his church.
When the track at was cut at Royal, Mitchell brought in a group of neighborhood winos who used to linger outside the studio, to serve as Green’s audience. “Willie wanted Al to have people here,” recalled the song’s organist Charles Hodges to Mojo magazine. “Sometimes, when you sing about something, if you look at people, you can relate with the song a little more compassionately. You’d be surprised what you can project from that. You feed on what you’re looking at.”
Let’s Stay Together
Let’s stay together
I, I’m I’m so in love with you
Whatever you want to do
Is all right with me
Cause you make me feel so brand new
And I want to spend my life with you
Let me say that since, baby, since we’ve been together
Loving you forever
Is what I need
Let me, be the one you come running to
I’ll never be untrue
Oh baby
Let’s, let’s stay together (gether)
Lovin’ you whether, whether
Times are good or bad, happy or sad
Oh, oh, oh, oh, yeah
Whether times are good or bad, happy or sad
Why, why some people break up
Then turn around and make up
I just can’t see
You’d never do that to me (would you, baby)
Staying around you is all I see
(Here’s what I want us do)
Let’s, we oughta stay together (gether)
Loving you whether, whether
Times are good or bad, happy or sad
Come on
Let’s stay,(let’s stay together) let’s stay together
Loving you whether, whether times are good or bad
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