Call Me by Al Green

Call Me, Al Green's sixth album, came out on Hi Records in 1973, and plenty of people rank it as the finest thing he ever did, a record often counted among the best soul albums ever made. It's Memphis soul at its most intimate: grooves that barely raise their voice, and Green gliding over them, sighing, pleading and floating up high like he's thinking out loud.

The surprise is the country streak. He covers both Willie Nelson and Hank Williams and makes them sound like they were born in Memphis. Three singles went top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100: "You Ought to Be with Me", "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)" and "Call Me (Come Back Home)". The album cracked the pop Top 10 and became his third No. 1 soul album, and later lists kept finding room for it: VH1 put it at 70 among the greatest albums in 2003, and Rolling Stone's 500 greatest had it at 289, then 290 in the 2012 revision.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.