Excellent with a little help from his friends

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	• Encouraging Words Billy Preston EMI Import, 2003 average customer review:based on 3 reviews view larger image
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A Great Find

It's a tragedy that this album has been so overlooked. To put it bluntly, this album deserves to be considered one of the top ten soul albums of all time. Billy Preston's beatiful organ and singing voice are complemented by excellent guitars (probably George Harrison, but there's very little info available about this album), an exciting rhythm section, and gorgeous backing vocals. The production and sound quality of this CD is fantastic.

The first two tracks should impress you right off the bat. "Right Now" is a great bit of rock and roll that would've fit perfectly on The Beatles' Let It Be album, on which Preston of course also played. "Little Girl" is a slow, powerful soul number with some of Billy's best singing.

The rest of the album is equally compelling stuff. Preston's covers of Beatles and Harrison songs are wonderful interpretations, but I actually prefer the songs that he penned himself.

If you enjoy Billy's keyboards, arrangements, and other contributions to Beatles and Rolling Stones songs, then I highly recommend this album, along with his earlier effort, That's The Way God Planned It. Of Billy's later material, check out his live album from his 1973 European Tour which featured the Rolling Stones' Mick Taylor as guest lead guitarist.

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Excellent with a little help from his friends

Definitely one of Billy Preston's best works. His good friend Eric Clapton helped out by playing some guitar on the album.

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a must have

this was Preston's swang song for the Apple lable. Billy would go on ofcourse to work alongside the Rolling Stones on several early 70's stellar recordings( Goats Head soup etc..) as well as producing chart topping material in the 70's at A&M. Encouraging Words" has to be his most cohesive record. The material chosen for this album was a nice mixture of originals and material written with the albums co-producer Beatle George Harrison. The versions of Harrison's "My Sweet Lord" and the Lennon/McCartney "I've Got a Feeling" are totally re-worked into a Gospel influenced Funk stew..splendid. The only downside of the reissue(and theirs not that many, included are 2 very good previously unreleased gems which led me to wonder after all these years how many other previously unreleased gems are stored in the Apple vaults?.)is the ommision of session players in the extended liner notes. It had been mentioned that this information has been lost with time. With the exception of George Harrison,and a few of Preston stateside friends their is not much information concerning the marvelous studio performances on this release..with all the Beatle/Apple archivist out their one would think these issues would be resolved. Still a powerful album worth collecting and keeping.

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Digitally remastered Reissue of the pop-soul legend's 1970 album produced by George Harrison. Features 15 tracks including 2 George Harrison covers, 'My Sweet Lord' & 'All Things (Must) Pass' & 1 Lennon/McCartney cover, 'I've Got a Feeling', as well as 2 bonus tracks, the previously unreleased 'As Long As I Got My Baby' & 'All That I've Got (I'm Gonna Give It To You)'. EMI. 1993.

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