The Reverend Al Green is known the world over for his extraordinary voice, his unmistakable sound and his legendary hits. With Everything's OK, his new release for Blue Note Records, Al Green comes to an exciting new chapter in his artistry. Strong in voice and in spirit, the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer sings a dozen songs that reveal his renewed passion for the kind of music that made him a household name some 30 years ago.

It was in the early 1970s that Green carved his place in music history with a run of celebrated hits that made him not just an R&B star but a pop icon. Since 1976, however, Green has concentrated on gospel music (recording numerous albums, but only two pop offerings), and since 1979 has led his Baptist congregation, the Full Gospel Tabernacle, in Memphis, Tenn. For Everything's OK, Green embraces both worlds by releasing a "secular" album under the name the Reverend Al Green's symbolic gesture, perhaps, but a significant one nonetheless.

For Everything's OK, Green once again teamed up with producer and arranger Willie Mitchell at Mitchell's Royal Recording Studios, the same studio where the two recorded those early hits- classics including "Tired of Being Alone," "Let's Stay Together," "I Can't Get Next to You," "I'm Still in Love With You," "Call Me," "Here I Am," "Let's Get Married" and "Love and Happiness." Green also reunited with Mitchell for his 2002 Blue Note debut, I Can't Stop. (That recording was their first collaboration since 1985, when they recorded the gospel album He Is The Light.)

Green started singing professionally at age 9, when he and his brothers formed a gospel quartet, the Greene Brothers, in their hometown of Forest City, Arkansas. (Green dropped the final "e" from his surname when he went solo.) They toured the gospel circuits in the South, and then began performing around Michigan when the family relocated to Grand Rapids. At 16, Green formed a pop group, Al Greene and the Creations, with high school friends, and they released a single, "Back Up Train," in 1967 (under the new name Al Greene and the Soul Mates) that went to #5 on the national R&B chart.

"The music is the message, the message is the music. So that's my little ministry that the Big Man upstairs gave to me-a little ministry called love and happiness."