Al Green - The REAL Story About The HOT GRITS & His Abusive History with Women

[Music] hey everybody we are taking a quick trip back down memory lane to my very first ever old school scandal video that's about two or three Channel names ago and it shows I made this video about three years ago and people who are new to my channel who come into contact with this video always ask me why I don't have my background music that they love so much so I'm going to put the background music in it and I'll add a few different visual changes which is something that I was not doing back then because I did not know what I was doing but I'm going to leave the audio exactly as it was so that you will know why I now write scripts before I film these videos thanks for supporting the channel everybody and helping to make it what it is now and what it will become hi YouTube this is Ty and welcome to the test of the Thai Channel trying something a little bit different from you all tonight let me know if you like this or not uh if you like it then I will continue this series I'll just want some suggestions for topics so today I'm doing something a little bit different uh some old school tea uh we all joke about you know the lady who threw the Hot Grits on Al Green and many of us have you know joked about it from time to time calling him you know Al grit screen and whatever and there are a lot of memes going on around with um when there was that whole grits Challenge on Facebook a few years ago but what a lot of people don't know or maybe for God is that that woman uh who through those grits on him her name is Mary Woodson and this is her she was his then girlfriend um beautiful lady here um she ended up immediately killing herself after she threw those grits on him and um caused him second and third degree burns on his back and his chest and his arms on that you know horrible night back um in October of 1974. so here is an article back from when that actually happened this is um and let me you know go in and give you my sources for this before we go on and go any further my sources are clearly the New York Times you can see Vibe boombox.com and the Chicago Tribune the Articles date back from 1974 to as recent as 2015 that I'm using for this and so yeah um this is the article here obviously you're not going to be able to read that so I'll go on and tell you what that says um it says a former girlfriend dumped a pan of scalding grits on Al Green a popular singer today as he was getting out of the bathtub and then apparently shot herself to death although the police were continuing to investigate the shooting of 29 year old Mary Woodson of Madison New Jersey inspector Dan Jones said it looks like suicide Mr Jones said that the authorities had found a three-page suicide note addressed to Mr Green in the victim's purse the inspector said it was written on stationary from the hotel where Mrs Woodson was staying the police said the shooting occurred at Mr Green's home near Memphis the 27 year old singer who records for the high recording company has cut five consecutive hit songs uh was hospitalized with second-degree burns on his back arm and stomach a hospital spokesman said the burns were serious but not critical Police Captain William Maley said that Mr Green told him he returned to his home about 4 a.m after recording a soundtrack for a new movie he was accompanied by Carlotta Beth Williams 21 years old of Denver Mr Green told Captain Maley that he went upstairs to take a bath and was just getting out of the tub when Mrs Woodson burst in threw a pan of quote hot boiling grits unquote on him and then ran out the officer said Mr Green told him that he then heard several shots and went into an adjoined room where he found Mrs Woodson's body a 38 caliber pistol registered to Mr Green was found next to the body Captain melee said Mr Green originally from Arkansas joined the memphis-based high record in 1971 since then more than 20 million copies of his records have been sold his five consecutive hits are tired of being alone call me Let's Stay Together you ought to be with me and I'm still in love with you last summer Mr Green was charged with assault and battery on the basis of a complaint filed by a former secretary Linda Wills now 25 of Washington the charge was dismissed on August 27th by a city court judge because of conflicting testimony so that's what that little article right there says so now we're all caught up on what happened in 1974. so that's not though that last part of that article that is not the only story of Al Green beating on the women but we'll get to that later as you may or may not know Al Green didn't find out Mary Whitson was a married woman with four children until after she committed suicide according to Mary's family and friends Al evenly even unknowingly sent roses to Mary and her husband's home on several occasions her husband allegedly turned a blind eye not wanting to assume that she was having Affair or either not wanting to confirm that she was having an affair Mary Woodson is often again the Forgotten element of the hot grit story but to her family and friends apparently what she did was really not a surprise to them um they say that there were a lot of warning signs that she was a bit of a troubled soul you can see that she's a beautiful woman apparently she was five foot four and very shapely and always dressed to the nines and her family said that she pretty much had the ability to walk into a room and wrap any man she wanted around her finger but she had a rocky history with men in her life according to someone who's a former friend of hers named Nora drewery she would use her sex appeal to attract famous musicians like James Brown when they would go out to places in New Jersey and New York and um some say that it's almost as if Mary Woodson was partying hard to escape the pressures of being a very young 20-something-year-old mother and wife now as far as dousing green with Hot Grits her sister Mary Woodson's sisters Joe James said says that she definitely did that this is a quote quote she definitely did that that was her character and they were the biggest hottest pot of grits you'd ever seen now unquote um though I have to say that I have no clue how her sister would have known that did she just you know want to be interviewed it's not like Mary Woodson would have been able to snap her a picture of the Grits back in 1974 did we have clout Chasers back then anyway um here are a couple of things that her family members say went on with past relationships the first one they say that um Mary Woodson um before her second marriage that she had an affair and she swallowed a handful of pills and had to have her pup her stomach pumped and then they said that in another relationship that Mary Woodson was sitting in a car with a guy who was her boyfriend at the time and questioned him about cheating on her and after he confessed that she shot him in the foot but they also said that he got back together with her so now according to boombox.com all of this happened before she ever met Al Green and she met him at a prison where she was visiting and he was doing a charitable concert for some of the prisoners and apparently he was instantly attracted to her and they started dating and Al Green says that um he loved her but she wanted to take things a lot faster than he was ready for and on that tragic Hot Grits night that said Al Green explained in his book that he was in a Memphis recording studio when he got a call from a sheriff who said that Mary Woodson was arrested at the Peabody Hotel for smoking marijuana so he went to the police station and to bail her out and he took her back to the music studio well he was a bit of a ladies man and I guess she thought she was the only one but then another one of his friends Carlotta Williams who was mentioned in that New York Times article she showed up unannounced and you know gave him a big hug at the music studio and he was a little bit concerned about you know how Woodson was going to react but it seemed like the two of the women were getting along well enough and so he did make it clear though before they went back to his house all three of them that he had a whole lot of bedrooms and there wasn't going to be any kind of kinky encounter quote with the three of them so uh Williams she began to feel some tension now this is the flight attendant the one who showed up unexpectedly so she just straight away went to one of these spare guest rooms as soon as they got to his house she said that she had an early fight in the morning remember she's a flight attendant and so Al Green found uh Miss Woodson in his kitchen at the stove stirring a pot of water before he went up to take a shower and according to him he asked her Al honey have you ever thought of getting married and married that's what he replied maybe we should talk about this in the morning baby and he says that they kissed and she said you know Al I would never do anything to hurt you and he said that he was confused by her saying that but he didn't suspect anything was wrong so he went on and went upstairs took off his clothes and uh to take a bath started brushing his teeth when he heard a sound behind him and he says in his book I looked up just in time to see Mary's reflection in the mirror she had a steaming hot a steaming pot in both of her hands and he says quote in the next second my world exploded into a thousand splatters of pure Agony Mary had added Grizz to the water making a thick boiling hot paste with all her strength she hurled it at me splashing the bathroom walls and scorching my naked back the pain was so intense that I wasn't sure what was happening for a moment and he says that his screaming alerted the the other girl who was there the flight attendant Williams and she opened the bedroom door and Al Green says that he pushed past her and ran into a bathroom and she helped him get into a bathtub and turned on some cold water in the shower and he says I screamed again bent over and started to black out when I suddenly heard uh when I suddenly heard over the Thundering spray in the shower the sound of a loud bang he said I looked at Carlotta again the flight attendant and she looked at me it was as if we both knew that something terrible was unfolding around us and all that we could do was stand in horrible helpless witness then another bang and the sickening unmistakable sound of something heavy hitting the floor Woodson had retreated to a bedroom after scalding green grabbing his gun and she fired one shot into a wall before killing herself with the second bullet and like the other article said that the suicide note was found in her purse now here's where I must say that I do find it odd that two shots were heard or at least they're saying two shots in his account in his book that news stories said that there were several shots heard and either way I found it a little bit odd and yes there have been conspiracy theories that perhaps Al Green shot her and there was you know this big police cover-up to help him get away with it because he was a known woman beater but he was a known woman beater with Deep Pockets so there's the thought that you know maybe he just paid the police off to kind of make it go away and then you know also a little bit odd that after this ends accident he just goes cold turkey Stone Cold Christian um so you know I can't say that I believe the conspiracy theories but I am willing to entertain them as possible but apparently later they found out that Mary Woodson had tried to kill herself just days before that night as well so that does you know also lend some credibility to the fact that she probably did kill herself as well and they said that she tried to kill herself just days before this incident by slitting her wrist and again taking a bunch of sleeping pills um so Al Green it previously written that song Shalala for Mary Woodson prior to all of this horrible stuff happening and he said that he will forever love Mary Woodson and that he's forever grateful to her he said that she's the only person who predicted that he would eventually be singing for the Lord and have his own church 10 years prior to that ever even being a thought in his mind he said that he chuckled at her statement and jokingly told her that she was crazy for thinking he'd ever do that so but it turns out that's exactly what he did and he's still singing gospel and preaching his sermons to this day at his Full Gospel Tabernacle Church which is located in his hometown in Memphis now remember I told you that we would get back to his story about abusing women well he married his wife in November of 1977. after all of this stuff with Mary Woodson two days later now this is according to her an article that I found from her in the Chicago Tribune like after she says that she came out with her story after Nicole Brown Simpson was killed because she just felt compelled to help he people who were in domestic violence situations so she says two days later after they got married that she was roused from her sleep in the middle of the night and beaten severely with an acoustic guitar over a disagreement about sex um by April 1978 this was just months before their first wedding anniversary she said that she filed for divorce alleging that she had suffered brutal beatings at the hands of her husband and life with the eventual eight-time Grammy award-winning gospel artist who once saying love and happiness was anything but I guess lovely happy he slapped her shoved her threatened her she said she said that he kicked her he once beat her again with that guitar and because she scratched his car once he punched her in the face in August it was time for them to go on the road she used to sing back up for him they traveled to Florida where he was scheduled to perform for two weeks at a hotel she says quote we were on our way to the hotel and I was supposed to but did not know the lodging arrangements and he beat me in the car across the face and quote swole my face she testified in a sworn deposition in 1982 as part of her divorce filing my eyes were black she said the next morning she says that he beat her again this time for not being ready on time that's what she also put in that same deposition she said that I bruised and battered she went on patting on makeup over dark spots and singing back up for concerts kind of puts you in the mind of it hope Tina Turner movie and then she says one night during the two-week stint she was awakened Suddenly by Al Green she said he quote woke me up out of my sleep and said that I was going to be a lady unquote and she said that he just started beating me she still apparently to this day or at least at the time that articles carries a scar near her left eye where she says that Al inflicted that Al inflicted as he beat her that night with a hand mirror I guess it broke on her face and so in April when she was five months pregnant she went to Philadelphia to be with her husband and he was performing there and the court records do show that and she said that she was spotting and feeling weak and she didn't feel up to having sex well she testified that he beat her with a boot and tore up all of her clothes with the exception of one dress so she returned to Memphis where a doctor treated her head wounds including a wound that required 10 stitches so after that boot incident she filed for divorce but within months she dropped the divorce complaint and returned back to Al Green um and now her she had ended up having three daughters by him in that marriage and none of them were old enough to remember what happened at that time however there are other members of her family including sisters and two children from a previous marriage that all do cooperate her stories of abuse but perhaps the most damning witness is Al Green himself who under oath admitted to striking his wife while acknowledging the existence of domestic violence from the beginning of their marriage in November Al Green agreed to be interviewed for this story that I'm that I'm using for this article but then he later backed out and apparently never agreed again to be interviewed as far as this story was concerned but still in a written answer to a divorce complaint filed by his wife in 1981 Al Green denied in 1982 and that throughout the marriage he had been guilty of physical cruelty um of threatening to harm his wife or having a violent temper however in a sworn testimony he admitted to abusing his wife although he maintained that not without provocation classic beater talk right she provoked me to hit her right so for her inability to have sex with him once Shirley green said under oath in 1982 that her husband beat her with a boot again that was you know when she was five months pregnant and in his response to that was when they asked about him doing that he says are you stating um that at any time the question was to Al Green are you stating that at any time you beat your wife it was because of some type of provocation or harassment that's what her attorney adds and he says yes the beating of my wife I kind of reject that because beating is a cruel word to me being slapped around what yeah and so again classic infuser talk they always minimize what they did he doesn't want to say beating he just slapped her around um It's a cruel act Mr Green that's what the attorney said he says yeah well it's cruel um it's more scars on the Mind than it is on the surface though so again you know interesting abuser type you know so thankfully though his wife Shirley green did make it out alive so in addition to this being some old 1970s tea let it be a cautionary tale I think that if a man will beat you once and he would beat you twice and if he's willing to do that he's willing to go even further so um we'll you know take this the story as we have it that um Mary Whitson did commit suicide but again because of just some of the details just a couple of little details being a little bit sketchy I could see it being a possibility that Al Green could have killed her but what do you think about it that's all that I have on this particular Story please uh put some comments down below let's get a conversation going um did this woman uh throw grits on him and then just kill herself um is it possible that there's more to the story than we know of course that's always a possibility [Music] um what else uh whatever kind of comments you have do you know more about this story have you heard more about this story did you already know that you know there was anything more to it than he got grits thrown on him that's just something that I've always heard and heard people laugh about I've even laughed about but I didn't realize that the person who threw the grids committed suicide that same night I never heard that part of the story so let me know what you knew about this and let me know if you want me to talk about some mother old tea and if you have some topics that you want me to talk about then please let me know anything along this vein some old stories and let's just uh reminisce okay I appreciate you for being here if you like this story please hit me with a thumbs up uh please get some comments going so we can get a discussion going and uh please share on all of your social media especially your Facebook and subscribe to this channel so that we can come back here and talk about this kind of stuff and more and I will see you on the next video thanks so much bye are you a content creator influencer or blogger who feels like your platform could use an extra boost are you thinking about becoming a content creator but you don't know where to start and you want to be sure that you dot all of your eyes and cross all of your t's if so Layla Lynn can likely show you exactly what you need to get on your way her fun new class is called the business of blogging with Layla Lynn and in it she is sharing the 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Channel: Ti's Hot Mess History

Views: 237,843

Keywords: al green, al green burned with hot grits, al green hot grits incident, al green love and happiness, al greens girlfriend hot grits, biography, boiling hot grits, carlotta williams, classic, hot grits, mary woodson, mary woodson al green, mary woodson white, memphis, old hollywood, old school, old school r&b, oldies music, scandal, scandalous old school, soul music, vintage hollywood scandal, How was al green burned?, What happened to al green with grits, tis hot mess history

Id: GjTJuhDrK9Y

Length: 24min 6sec (1446 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 24 2022