Product Details

• Actors: Al Green, Willie Mitchell, Ken Tucker
• Directors: Robert Mugge
• Writers: Robert Mugge
• Producers: Robert Mugge, Joe Mulherin
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: Winstar
• VHS Release Date: December 22, 1998
• Run Time: 94 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 1572524049
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #348,853 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Gospel According to Al Green is a fascinating 1984 documentary about soul music's most insinuating singer, Al Green. Directed by Robert Mugge, it captures an expansive Green talking about his career and performing in front of a military crowd in a hotel ballroom. Green's high, seductive voice, passionate performing style, and sinewy stage presence make the musical sections of the film compelling--even if you're not a fan of gospel music. Because, at this particular juncture in his career, that's what Green was performing, though the songs have the slow-boiling insistence of his best soul songs. In the interview segments, Green talks about how he wrote his songs and the religious conversion experience he underwent that caused him to put his pop-music career aside and serve the Lord--and how, when he gets cooking onstage, people don't seem to care that when he's singing about "Love and Happiness," he's praising God's name, rather than singing to a woman. Green, notoriously press-shy, is remarkably open discussing his tragic encounter with a spurned lover, who dumped boiling grits on him and then killed herself. --Marshall Fine

The Wall Street Journal

[The Gospel According to Al Green & Sonny Rollins: Saxophone Colossus]hold up well as vital profiles of their subjects at turning points in their lives, each combining a concert film with a journalistic backstory.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars the sound is glorious!, January 18, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Al Green: Gospel According to Al Green (DVD)

The quality of sound on this DVD is truly remarkable given that it came from corroded and "baked" masters. Strong, muscular bass, creamy highs ... pure music heaven! Al Green is a strange and beautiful man, though this film does not shy away from depicting his darker half ... that ambitious, slick salesman persona. Still the purity, intensity, and passion of his sound shines through in spades. One of the best music documentaries made ... a lost classic?

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars NEED I SAY MORE, May 13, 2004

By 

CHERYL "CHERYL" (Oklahoma City, Ok) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Al Green: Gospel According to Al Green (DVD)

LOVE IT, LOVE IT, LOVE IT!!! NEED I SAY MORE. THIS DVD SHOWS YOU JUST HOW TALENTED THIS MAN IS. IT IS ENJOYABLE TO WATCH HIM PERFORM AND INTERACT WITH HIS AUDIENCE. THIS DVD GIVES YOU 'LETS STAY TOGETHER' AND PLENTY OF WONDERFUL GOSPEL MUSIC PLUS HIS FIRST SERMON. WHEN HE SUNG 'WHEN THE GATES SWING OPEN' JUST BLEW ME AWAY! IF I HAD A COMPLAINT IT WOULD BE WE DIDN'T GET MORE OF THE R&B. REGARDLESS, THIS IS A MUST HAVE. LOVE YOU AL GREEN.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Amazing Grace of Al Green, January 16, 2009

By 

Stephanie DePue (Carolina Beach, NC USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Gospel According to Al Green (DVD)

"Gospel according to Al Green," is a long-awaited 25th anniversary edition of the television profile by Robert Mugge. The DVD documentary, originally televised in 1984, has been shown on PBS stations, BET, and at various festivals. It offers a candid, close look at Green, one of the few remaining candidates for King of Soul who's still with us today. (And one of the few who could give James Brown a run for his money as the hardest-working man in show business.) It shows the performer in the recording studio, in performance at Bolling Air Force base, and preaching at the church he founded in Memphis, Tennessee. This reissue also offers a 90-minute audio interview with the singer, and several other special features.

Green is a nine-time Grammy winner, and member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; he's recorded more than 40 albums. He recently released a new CD,Lay It Down, and received the BET Lifetime Achievement Award (2008). He was a 1970's soul singer with a healthy career, built on "Let's Stay Together" and other hits, until he awoke one morning in a hotel room hungry for religion, and so became a gospel singer and Pentecostal preacher. The singer has a non-stop, whiter than white-toothed smile, a bedrock of honesty, and a galvanizing energy, and he sweats up a storm, whether in concert or preaching, which he does in speech-to-music, and song - looks to me like he literally invented rap. On this DVD, we see his electrifying takes of "Let's Stay Together," "Free at Last," and "Amazing Grace."

Mugge has been called "the king of the American music documentary" by "L.A. Weekly." The award-winning filmmaker has also made New Orleans Music in Exile; and Saxophone Colossus.

Many years ago, during my English exile, I was lying on the floor of the cottage, listening to Otis Redding, when Tony Burfield, the pompous young music business flunky who lived next door, came in. Burfield told me that the floor was meant "to walk upon and stand upon, not to lie upon," and that I was dating myself listening to Redding; that those in the know were now listening to Green, and I've never forgiven him. But I've long since forgiven Green: the man just has an amazing way with him.