Excellent with a little help from his friends
Kim Greer | St. Louis, MO USA | 04/28/2008
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Definitely one of Billy Preston's best works. His good friend Eric Clapton helped out by playing some guitar on the album."
A must have
d.nice | richmond,va | 07/10/2007
(5 out of 5 stars)
"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."