"You've got to use the same guys to get that sound," Green says. "When they play it, it sounds right. So we brought them in, and they just sat down and did it."

Green started singing professionally at age nine, when he and his brothers formed a gospel quartet, the Greene Brothers, in their hometown of Forest City, Arkansas. (Green dropped the final "e" from his surname when he went solo.) They toured the gospel circuits in the South, then began performing around Michigan when the family relocated to Grand Rapids. At 16, Green formed a pop group, Al Greene and the Creations, with high school friends, and the group released a single, "Back Up Train," in 1967 (under the new name Al Greene and the Soul Mates) that went to #5 on the national R&B chart.

Green and Mitchell's historic meeting took place in 1969, soon after Green decided to go solo. Mitchell – by then a renowned bandleader, arranger and trumpeter – hired the young singer to front his band for a gig in Midland, Texas, and hearing something special, approached

 Green after the show. "I told him, "You come to Memphis and you can be a star,'" Mitchell says. "Al asked me, 'How long?' and I said 'Eighteen months, it's going to take a little work.' He told me he didn't have that much time," says Mitchell, laughing. Green quickly reconsidered, though. "I didn't have any money," Green says, "so I told him, 'About this star thing, if that's what you really wanna do, fine – but I need fifteen hundred dollars.'