What's important to know about Al Green – other than that he's possibly the best and most important soul singer to grace the planet – is that he was a God-fearing man singing ungodly music. And the key to his success was that until he gave his soul to the lord and retired from the world of secular music in 1978, he lived uneasily on the divide between the church and the club.

Love? Devotion? Sacrifice? Guilt? The emotions that were fundamental to the church had their place in the secular world as well. By the mid-'70s, in the wake of the civil rights movement, amid the celebration of secular pleasures that leaked over from the largely white counterculture and marked funk and disco, the church ceased to play the crucial role for a new generation of African Americans that it had for their older brothers and sisters and their parents. But back in the late '50s and early '60s, when singers like Sam Cooke, Jerry Butler, the Valentinos, and Curtis Mayfield began recording pop music, the push and pull between heaven and earth, the tension between the forbidden and the desirable, was a positively explosive combination.

Green came along a few years later (his first album was recorded in 1967, and he didn't have a top 10 hit until "Tired of Being Alone" in the summer of 1971). After that, he owned the joint, period. There's no shortage of terrific Green material floating around (all of his Hi Records albums were remastered and reissued in recent years). So go buy The Immortal Soul of Al Green if you want. There are a few cuts you won't get on the albums, including a cover of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" (recorded in 1968, released in 1989) – ditto a 1970 almost-cover of "Mustang Sally" called "Ride, Sally, Ride" and a cover of "To Sir with Love." And the booklet seems more honest than most, discussing the breakup of one of soul music's fabulous pairings, Green and producer Willie Mitchell. But what really does the trick is kicking back and letting his soft, subtle, incredibly sexy voice fill the room – and I don't care how you get it. (J.H. Tompkins)