GETTING a phone call from Al Green, the Reverend Al Green to his flock at the Full Gospel Tabernacle in Memphis, is like getting a mini concert all of your own.

His conversation is littered with lines from 40 years of hits like Tired of Being Alone, L.O.V.E., Let’s Stay Together, Put Your Head On My Pillow and, his personal mantra, Love And Happiness.

He also refers to himself in the third person, shoots off at tangents, laughs a lot, delivers mini sermons and dips into a memory bank filled with the people who have only ever been names on record labels to me and thousands of other English soul boys.

“I think about all those people that were around when we started back in ’67, ’68, ’69, I mean we still got Aretha, we still got Stevie Wonder, but we lost a lot of people. Imagine what songs Sam Cooke would be singing now, or Marvin Gaye, or Jackie Wilson; probably knock your jellies off.

“Otis Redding – [sings] ‘Fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa, your turn’ – he was a natural. He stood 6ft 2, 6ft 4, handsome, he don’t dance so much as move with the music.

“So, all these people, they just about had the scene covered. That mean little Al gotta come up with something really special to get heard.”

When Al’s in flight, there’s no stopping him. His smooth falsetto is instantly recognisable from the 70s soul classics he created with producer Willie Mitchell – sinewy, sexy grooves, laced with restrained horns and a bed of strings providing the perfect setting for that delicious voice.

I wonder, did they know they were making magic when they cut those records?

“No, I don’t think any of us knew quite how special what we had was gonna be. Willie Mitchell and I spent a time eyeing each other up. I seen he had a twinkle in his eye, probably knew how to get a record out.

“But those songs will never die. I had this girl in Oklahoma City the other night, she jumped up onstage from the left and a police lady grabbed her, then this black girl jumped up from the right and a police man grabbed her and they all saying ‘I love you, I love you’.

“Then I had a husband remind me they got three kids because of those songs. In fact, a lot of little babies been born because of Al’s records.

“It’s real emotional, real magical and I understand it’s a bit like Vanity Lane with me being a preacher and all, but God is Love. Love may start in the Holiday Inn, or the Hilton, or the Hyatt, or even out there on the corner, but you get down the line and you get that everlasting love, that eternal love, that’s what we talking about here. That’s what I talk about every Sunday at the Full Gospel Tabernacle. God is Love. [singing again] ‘L.O.V.E.’ ‘Love and happiness’.”

He’s pretty clear on it now, but knowing what kind of love he was talking about hasn’t always been Al’s forte.

Born Albert Greene (he didn’t drop the ‘e’ until his first album with Willie Mitchell, 1969’s Green Is Blues), in Arkansas in 1946, Al formed a gospel group with his brothers, The Greene Brothers, until his sharecropper daddy kicked the teenage Al out of the house for listening to Jackie Wilson’s Baby Workout.

Throwing himself into the secular world, Al paid his dues in a couple of three-gigs-a-night club bands before Willie Mitchell asked him to come to Memphis and try out some studio time.

A string of hit albums and singles followed, until Al got his wake-up call in 1974 when a married former girlfriend poured a pan of boiling grits over him while he bathed, giving him second-degree burns, and then shot herself with his gun. By the time Al was injured falling off stage in Cincinatti in 1979, he was more than ready to return to gospel music where he stayed until 1988’s hit duet with Annie Lennox, Put A Little Love In Your Heart.

Since then he’s recorded gospel, soul and jazz albums, most recently 2008’s universally praised Lay It Down set which gave him his first Billboard top 10 hit since 1973’s Call Me.

So, can secular and sacred ever be balanced?

“I don’t know about balance, Nick. Secular is secular. Sacred is sacred. They like oil and water, they don’t really mix, but what you gotta do is know what you want to say and write in a way that gets it heard.

“Al’s record might be playing at three in the morning in a hotel room somewhere and a girl is saying ‘owww, I’m gonna make it alright’, but what she may not know is I’m talking about pure love – Love and Happiness that’s all I’m saying.

“You know, back then I really didn’t have a lot of choice. I had to put food on the table and get my kids through school, make sure they got winter coats and as a musician you don’t know if you gonna make $50 or $50,000 until folks make the call to ask you to play. I get a call ask me if I want to go to New York City and play in BB King’s club and I’m like ‘Yep, where do I get the plane?’ But I don’t know until the phone ring.”

As for what we’re going to hear when Al plays the BIC on June 26 with former Steely Dan/Doobie Brothers mainstay Michael McDonald, it’s best left to the Reverend to explain.

“You tell Bournemouth Al says it’s gonna be fun, we gonna have a good time.

“I’m enjoying it, of course I’m enjoying it, what man doesn’t enjoy his life? Well, I don’t know actually, perhaps plenty of people not enjoying the things happening in their lives which is why it is a blessing, an honour and a privilege to be enjoying this.

“And the reason we’re enjoying it is because we’re learning all the time. We – and there’s 22 of us out on the road these days – have been through some tough times, taken some real hard knocks, but that’s OK because we learning.

“Those girls you see on stage singing back up, they grew up as Al’s daughters, they the Green Sisters and oh boy can they whip up the bomb, they jammin’ it. I was with them last night and when they start ‘Lay your head…’ I’m calling ‘Go on, girl’… ‘on my pillow’… I’m ‘go right on, girl.’ They’ll blow you socks off boy!