Al Green, whose latest album, Lay it Down, was released last month, is at the MGM Grand Theater at Foxwoods tonight.

AP / Dave Martin

NEW ORLEANS — Al Green is 62 now, but it’s easy to envision what the good reverend looked like as a child. When he smiles that familiar high-wattage grin, his remarkably unlined face lights up like a kid who has just heard the ice cream truck jingle from around the corner.

When he laughs, it is an unabashed giggle. He continuously interrupts himself to take off on flights of song in a voice that remains equal parts butter and grits, prim and primal. Years of preaching at his Full Gospel Tabernacle Church, in Memphis, Tenn., have also gifted him with a unique manner of speaking; sentences spill into one another and octaves rise and fall with varying degrees of urgency.

Of his divided pursuits, he says: “I feel like Al Green the performer, Al Green the pastor, Al Green the singer is the same person sitting right here talking to you. They’re the same people. You can’t divide up a child. If he’s the child, he’s the child, you can’t cut his feet off and make somebody else.”

Green comes to the MGM Grand Theater at Foxwoods tonight, but we caught up with him prior to an appearance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival last month.

Ensconced in a hotel suite, Green, clad in a snazzy velour track suit, had plenty to smile, laugh, sing, and testify about. His new album, Lay it Down, which came out last month, is a stone classic. It is his third release since hooking up with the Blue Note label in 2003, and, even though the first two albums were produced by the man who co-created Green’s early-’70s classics, Lay it Down is by far the Al Green-est of them all.

Which may come as a surprise to anyone who skims the list of contributors to the project, some of whom were not born when Green began turning out some of the most enduring R&B music of all time, including classics such as “Let’s Stay Together,” “Love and Happiness,” and “Tired of Being Alone.” Riding shotgun as co-producers with Green were Ahmir “?uestlove” Thompson, drummer for the revered hip-hop group the Roots, and Roots-associated keyboardist-producer James Poyser.

Green’s spiritual, neo-soul offspring John Legend, Anthony Hamilton, and Corinne Bailey Rae all showed up with pens in hand. And the Dap-Kings, the brass might behind Sharon Jones and Amy Winehouse, provide the horn power.

That supporting cast reeks of a desire to keep up with the cool kids. And yet there is very little about Lay it Down that could be dubbed “neo.” From the title track, which eases you in with silken strings and an entreaty to connubial bliss, to the closer “Standing in the Rain” — where Green bathes in the redemptive power of love — the record feels like it could’ve been released in 1977. The howls remain piercing, the crooning smooth, and the accompaniment tasteful, with an undercurrent of rawness.

“Once you get down with making the music fold around the artist, then you’ll start playing exactly what they wound up playing,” Green says of his collaborators. “That music is 2008, but it’s of the same source. And you’re not going to get away from that.”

And who would want to? “That’s what they said. ‘We don’t want you to! In fact, it will be good if we can just improve on what you did,’ ” recalls Green with delight.

And that was exactly Thompson’s mission. He considers the comment “this sounds like an old Al Green album,” the highest compliment. He had hoped to do for Green what Jack White of the White Stripes did for country icon Loretta Lynn on her 2004 album, Van Lear Rose: reintroduce a legend by returning to the original template without resorting to cheap imitation.

“More than the creative aspect, and the lyrical aspect, to me the way that the album sounds is important,” says Thompson, who left in tape hiss, amp noise, and Green’s ad-libs and giggles. “All that stuff is the most important stuff.”

All parties seemed to agree that Green’s two previous Blue Note releases were solid but a little too polished. Lay it Down restores a certain meatiness and gristle to the Southern soul.

“I wanted it raw,” says Thompson, “but Al wanted it filthy.” Or as Green succinctly puts it, “It goes out and grabs the sound.”

Whether it’s 1968 or 2008, Al Green is still in love with soul music: “You want to have a good time with it, and that’s what we tried to do.”

Al Green appears tonight at 8 with Gladys Knight at the Foxwoods Resort Casino, MGM Grand Theater, Route 2, Mashantucket, Conn. Tickets are $40 to $80. Reservations at (800) 200-2882, www.foxwoods.com.