Livin' for You

Album: Livin' for You (1973)
Charted: 19
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Songfacts®:

  • Written by Al Green and producer Willie Mitchell, this was Green's fourth song to top the US Billboard R&B charts (known then as Hot Soul Singles).
  • This was Green's first #1 R&B hit without co-writer/drummer Al Jackson Jr., who had just reunited with his instrumental Soul group Booker T. & the MG's.
  • Mitchell remembered stopping by Green's office on Thanksgiving Day with the idea for this song, and the two knocked it out in the hour before dinner - a curious feat considering the song was released three days before Thanksgiving that year!
  • This was Green's first single since "Tired Of Being Alone" that didn't reach gold status and didn't break into the Top Ten on the Pop charts.
  • Had Green's band had their way, the Livin' for You album would've had a whole new sound: reggae. Willie Mitchell's Hi Rhythm Section suggested a trip to the Bahamas to get a feel for the emerging sound of the islands, but the trip never happened.

Comments: 1

  • Barry from Sauquoit, NyOn this day in 1974 {April 6th} Al Green performed "Livin' For You" on the Saturday-afternoon syndicated television program, 'Soul Train'...
    Ten weeks earlier it had peaked at #1 {for 1 week} on Billboard's Soul Singles chart and it spent seventeen weeks on the chart...
    And it reached #19 on Billboard's Top 100 chart...
    Between 1967 and 2008 the Arkansas native had thirty-six records on the Soul Singles chart, sixteen made the Top 10 with six* reaching #1...
    Beside the above "Livin' For You", his five other #1 records were, "Let's Stay Together" {for 9 weeks 1972}, "I'm Still In Love With You" {for 2 weeks in 1972}, "You Ought To Be With Me" {for 1 week in 1972}, "L-O-V-E (Love)" {for 2 weeks in 1975} and "Full of Fire" {for 1 week in 1975}...
    The Reverend Albert Leornes Greene will celebrate his 73rd birthday in seven days on April 13th, 2019...
    R.I.P Don Cornelius {1936 - 2012}...
    * He just missed having a seventh #1 record when his "Sha-La-La" peaked at #2 for two weeks, and it was "Woman To Woman" by Shirley Brown and "I Feel A Song (In My Heart)" by Gladys Knight and the Pips that kept it out of the top spot.
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