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Soul singer Al Green’s sharecropper father kicked him out of their Forrest City, Arkansas, house as a teen for listening to secular music, but that didn’t stop him from winning 11 Grammy Awards after years of hustling and doing drugs.
A traumatic incident subsequently changed his life: His girlfriend, upset because Green would not marry her, threw boiling grits on him in the bath and then fatally shot herself. He spent months in the hospital, swore off secular music and became a minister, establishing his own church.
Green continues to sing and record gospel while returning to his R&B roots.
– Eve Lederman, The Arkansas 100