Encouraging Words

was about as fine an album as ever issued by anyone who wasn't a member of , and it's also better than many of the 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 ' business ventures; even many fans never had a chance to find out it was there, obscured as it was by his subsequent chart success with on the label. A bold and searing effort mixing , , and sounds about as well as any record cut that year, lived up its killer musical pedigree, partly an offshoot of the evolution of the and albums, and of sessions that had produced for ; but it also picked up where 's playing for had left off in 1968. The surging, soaring and the driving rocker both originals, were worth the price of the album, but for those requiring familiar fare, 's renditions of are here too, the first two as stunning numbers (the second with some gorgeous embellishments) that make the versions seem pallid; and the latter a delightfully funky rendition that makes ' recording sound like a classy demo; and for truly, delightfully strange sound amalgams, manages to couple soaring with some loud lead guitar and a piano part derived from (at least according to the annotator -- this reviewer would have said ). [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