Al Green's Full Gospel Tabernacle — Memphis, Tennessee

The Full Gospel Tabernacle at 787 Hale Road in the Whitehaven neighbourhood of Memphis is the church where Al Green has served as pastor since 1976 — the institution at the centre of his transformation from the most sensual voice in soul music to a gospel minister and back to a secular performer of the first rank. Green founded the church following a personal crisis in 1974, when a former companion poured boiling grits on him before taking her own life. He interpreted the trauma as a divine warning, was ordained as a pastor, and devoted himself to the church for years before gradually returning to secular recording.

Green's soul recordings for Hi Records in the early 1970s — produced by Willie Mitchell in Memphis — are among the most purely pleasurable music ever made: "Let's Stay Together," "I'm Still in Love with You," "Here I Am (Come and Take Me)," "Tired of Being Alone," "Call Me" — albums of extraordinary sensual richness and melodic invention. His voice, with its extraordinary falsetto and its ability to move between vulnerability and command in a single phrase, remains one of the most distinctive in American music. When he returned to secular music in the 1980s, he did so without abandoning the church.

The Full Gospel Tabernacle holds services every Sunday and visitors are welcomed. Al Green has continued to preach there regularly across five decades, making it one of the few places where a true music legend can be encountered in an ongoing, communal, non-commercial context. The church is modest in its physical appointments but extraordinary in its history. Memphis music tourists often make the trip to Whitehaven specifically to attend a Sunday service.