427. Al Green, "Call Me"

 

The Reverend makes his second appearance on the List "with the patient attention that defines his limitless sex appeal," an intoxicating record that showcases his incredible voice but you know what?  The Oscar for Best Supporting Artist goes to Charles Hodges on the Hammond organ, which pretty much competes for your attention with Green's voice on almost every song.  Hodges makes the thing burp and croon and swirl around the vocals like it's alive.  An amazing sound.

(Side note - Hodges, who's played on a generation's worth of albums, is also on the Mountain Goats' 2020 record Getting Into Knives. The man gets around.)

Although every song is worth your time, the centerpiece is surely "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)," a song I knew every note of even though I never owned this album or even listened to it all the way through before.  So I was wondering, how do I know this song so well?  I hardly ever listen to the radio, I never owned this album, and I don't recall any of my friends being huge Al Green heads.  How did this song lodge itself into my consciousness?  Then I realized it: JUKEBOXES.

If you were in dive bars a lot like I was in the 90's and early 00's, you absolutely heard this song on the jukebox more times than you could count.  Back then, a bar's jukebox was curated and reflected the bar's sensibilities (ideally), so for example Lucky 13 (RIP) was famous citywide for their punk rock jukebox, as was Zeitgeist.  Someone obviously put a lot of time and effort into selecting the albums for those jukeboxes and it showed.  There were some really good ones elsewhere too, like I remember Buddha Bar in Chinatown having a particularly good "alternative" rock jukebox. I seem to remember Whiskey Thieves in the Tenderloin having a good one too.  The jukebox at the old Tosca - when it was just a bar bar, not a fancy-ass Italian restaurant, was all opera and Dean Martin, which matched perfectly with the old school Italian guy vibe.

But a lot of dive bars just kinda defaulted to whatever the Jukebox Guy put on there and the Jukebox Guy liked Al Green.  Ergo, dive bar people know a lot of Al Green.  Could be worse, amirite?

So if you were in a dive bar in San Francisco in the 90's, I'm assuming you, like me, heard "Here I Am" enough times for it to be burned into your memory like it is mine.  But really, you can't go wrong with any song on this album.