BILLY PRESTON – Encouraging Words (Reissue) – LP – Gold Coloured Vinyl [MAR 27]

LP – Limited Edition Gold Coloured Vinyl (2026 Reissue).

First released in the UK on 11 September 1970 the album was co-produced by Billy and George Harrison, with two of Georges songs All Things Must Pass and My Sweet Lord issued here for the first time, two months before his own recordings appeared on the triple album All Things Must Pass. In 2010 Record Collector magazine described Encouraging Words as one of the finest titles in the Apple Records catalogue, while virtuoso keyboard player Rick Wakeman told BBC Radio 4s John Wilson he considered Prestons two Apple albums absolute gems a perfect combination of gospel and funk. The album was last released on vinyl in 1992.

Encouraging Words was about as fine an album as Apple Records ever issued by anyone who wasnt a member of the Beatles, and its also better than many of the Apple albums issued by the ex-bandmembers; but its also among the most obscure of any album that the label ever issued by a major artist without a hit single to drive its sales, the LP never did more than brush the very bottom of the charts, and it was quickly lost amid the financial collapse of the label and the implosion of the Beatles business ventures; even many Billy Preston fans never had a chance to find out it was there, obscured as it was by his subsequent chart success with Outta Space on the A&M label.

A bold and searing effort mixing gospel, soul, and rock sounds about as well as any record cut that year, Encouraging Words lived up its killer musical pedigree, partly an offshoot of the evolution of the Let It Be and All Things Must Pass albums, and of sessions that Preston and George Harrison had produced for Doris Troy; but it also picked up where Prestons playing for Ray Charles had left off in 1968. The surging, soaring blues The Same Thing Again, and the driving rocker Youve Been Acting Strange, both Preston originals, were worth the price of the album, but for those requiring familiar fare, Prestons renditions of My Sweet Lord, All Things (Must) Pass, and Ive Got a Feeling are here too, the first two as stunning gospel numbers (the second with some gorgeous jazz and classical embellishments) that make the Harrison versions seem pallid; and the latter a delightfully funky rendition that makes the Beatles recording sound like a classy demo; and for truly, delightfully strange sound amalgams, Sing One for the Lord manages to couple soaring gospel with some loud lead guitar and a piano part derived from Tchaikovsky (at least according to the annotator this reviewer would have said Grieg).

Bruce Eder, AllMusic

Tracklist:

Side One
1. Right Now
2. Little Girl
3. Use What You Got
4. My Sweet Lord
5. Let The Music Play
6. The Same Thing Again

Side Two
1. Ive Got A Feeling
2. Sing One For The Lord
3. When You Are Mine
4. I Dont Want You To Pretend
5. Encouraging Words
6. All Things (Must) Pass
7. Youve Been Acting Strange