BILLY PRESTON
''ENCOURAGING WORDS''
1970
49:44
1 /Right Now
Billy Preston/3:16
2 /Little Girl
Billy Preston/3:32
3 /Use What You've Got
Billy Preston/4:23
4 /My Sweet Lord
George Harrison/3:23
5 /Let the Music Play
Jesse Kirkland / Billy Preston/2:44
6 /The Same Thing Again
Billy Preston/4:37
7 /I've Got a Feeling
John Lennon / Paul McCartney/2:53
8 /Sing One For the Lord
George Harrison / Billy Preston/3:49
9 /When You Are Mine
Billy Preston/2:47
10 /I Don't Want You To Pretend
Billy Preston/2:38
11 /Encouraging Words
Billy Preston/3:36
12 /All Things (Must) Pass
George Harrison/3:45
13 /You've Been Acting Strange
R.L. Williams/3:34
14 /As Long As I Got My Baby
Billy Preston/2:44
15 /All That I Got (I'm Gonna Give It To You)
Billy Preston / Doris Troy/3:35
Billy Preston – vocals, organ, piano, electric piano, harmonica, backing vocals
George Harrison – electric guitars, Moog synthesizer, backing vocals
Eric Clapton – electric guitar
Delaney Bramlett – electric guitar, backing vocals
Carl Radle – bass
Jim Gordon – drums
Klaus Voormann – bass
Ringo Starr – drums
Bobby Keys – saxophones
Jim Price – trumpet, trombone, horn arrangements
The Edwin Hawkins Singers – backing vocals
members of The Temptations' tour band – electric guitar, bass, drums
members of Sam & Dave's tour band – bass, drums
uncredited string arrangements and percussion
REVIEW
By Bruce Eder
Encouraging Words was about as fine an album as Apple Records ever issued by anyone who wasn't a member of
the Beatles, and it's also better than many of the Apple albums issued by the ex-bandmembers; but it's 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
Preston's playing for
Ray Charles had left off in 1968. The surging, soaring blues "The Same Thing Again," and the driving rocker "You've Been Acting Strange," both
Preston originals, were worth the price of the album, but for those requiring familiar fare,
Preston's renditions of "My Sweet Lord," "All Things (Must) Pass," and "I've 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). [The 2010 reissue of Encouraging Words was remastered by the same Abbey Road team who remastered the acclaimed 2009 Beatles reissues and was expanded by three bonus tracks: the previously uneleased “How Long Has the Train Been Gone,” the scrapped B-side “As Long As I’ve Got My Baby” and “All That I’ve Got (I’m Gonna Give To You),” cowritten by Doris Troy.]
BIOGRAPHY
By Bill Dahl
It's advantageous to get an early start on your chosen career, but
Billy Preston took the concept to extremes. By age ten he was playing keyboards with gospel diva
Mahalia Jackson, and two years later, in 1958, he was featured in Hollywood's film bio of
W.C. Handy, St. Louis Blues, as young
Handy himself.
Preston was a prodigy on organ and piano, recording during the early '60s for Vee-Jay and touring with
Little Richard. He was a loose-limbed regular on the mid-'60s ABC TV series Shindig, proving his talent as both vocalist and pianist, and he built an enviable reputation as a session musician, even backing
the Beatles on their
Let It Be album. That impressive
Beatles connection led to
Preston's big break as a solo artist with his own Apple album, but it was his early-'70s soul smashes "Outa-Space" and the high-flying vocal "Will It Go Round in Circles" for A&M that put
Preston on the permanent musical map. Sporting a humongous Afro and an omnipresent gap-toothed grin,
Preston showed that his enduring gospel roots were never far removed from his joyous approach. He continued to perform and record throughout the '80s, '90s, and 2000s, until he fell into a coma caused by pericarditis late in 2005; sadly, he never regained consciousness and passed away on June 6, 2006.
