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.] ~ Bruce Eder