Songs Rhino loves, #68: Al Green & Ann Nesby - “Put It On Paper”
Bar none, the sexiest song about marriage I’ve ever heard.
I discovered this song sometime around the year 2002, when it was included on an Al Green greatest hits compilation I gained access to. (I believe I bought it at an HMV, this latter being Canada’s once-dominant gene of CD and DVD stores!)
It’s a pure masterpiece – not only is the production incredible (horns, strings, organ, the whole bit, starting out as a magnificent “I Heard It Through The Grapevine”-style slow burn and fleshing out into a glorious locked-in groove), and not only does Al Green sing the hell out of it, but he gets wildly upstaged by Ann Nesby, who on the basis of this song and this song alone gets my vote for the single greatest female soul vocalist I’ve ever encountered aside from the one and only Aretha Franklin. In an alternate and more just universe, the two are precisely equally as successful.
I mean it! Just listen to her! I can hardly imagine not being captivated by a vocal performance that staggering! I have all the affection in the world for the likes of Adele and Beyoncé and likely also pretty much whoever else you’re inclined to name, but who the hell is taking it there?
Mary J Blige, sure – I love Mary J. and won’t hear a word against her; in fact, she will be the subject of an edition of this column very soon. Faith Evans, yes, most of the time – she’s underrated as hell, one of the true greats. Patti LaBelle and Merry Clayton and Millie Jackson and Mavis Staples and Irma Thomas and Barbara Mason and Jean Knight when they see fit, awright, yeah. The late likes of Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Yvonne Fair and Sharon Jones and Barbara Acklin and Phyllis Hyman and Dusty Springfield, yes. I can only think of a small handful of vocalists of any gender who come close, frankly. What she does on this is so goddamn lightspeed incredible at every moment that there’s no way I could ever conceive of it not belonging in my personal canon.
I don’t know who wrote the song, but I think it’s pretty brilliant on the level of lyrics as well! It sketches a very evocative portrait of a couple deeply in love who genuinely believe with everything in them that the way to be “pleasing in God’s sight!” is to get married before they get down. The fact that the two of them were well into middle age when they recorded this and are presently 76 years old, in his case, and 67 years old, in hers, makes the passion and conviction you can hear in their voices, which is expertly matched by the brilliant lyrics, all the sweeter. I love this song so much that if some future partner of mine wanted to walk down the aisle to it, or have our first dance to it, I would be enthusiastic about that. It’s a barnburner, and I listened to it almost every day for the entire calendar years of 2021 and 2022. Here’s a photo of Ann Nesby, just because I looked her up on Wikipedia to check my fax a moment ago and realized that the photo of het that they make available of her there is gorgeous.
Doesn’t she look every bit the radiant and dignified queen of soul? And it turns out that she has been nominated for a passel of Grammys and even done some acting! She also has a longstanding affiliation with the gospel group Sounds of Blackness! Here’s a YouTube link to “Put It On Paper”, just in case some of y’all can’t access it on Spotify.
Such a gorgeous, devastating song, ain’t it?