Benny Hester - Benny... (1972) [Reissue 2016]

It might be hard to imagine now, but there was a time when "Christian rock" was an oxymoron. It wasn’t until the advent of the Haight-Asbury-friendly "Jesus movement" in the late '60s that CCM (Contemporary Christian Music) became a staple in worship services. Before there were charts and public access programs full of it, the genre’s seeds were being planted by individual voices like Benny Hester’s, young singer/songwriters strumming guitars outside of makeshift chapels—Hester recalls first attending a "gigantic tent revival on [a] vacant lot." He and his peers remained enamored with both the psychedelic sounds of post-Beatles rock and the therapeutic possibilities of Christ.

Today, Hester is regarded as one of the CCM movement’s pioneers. He wrote many of the genre’s standards, and would go on to release the longest-running #1 on the Christian music charts in 1985. But a full decade earlier—when Hester got his first break as a solo artist—he was poised for a more uncertain career path, and on a potentially larger scale. Hester spent the late ‘60s and early ‘70s bumming around Las Vegas. He hawked jingles and helped out at soul recording sessions before an opportunity to record his songs arose. Miraculously, the most in-demand mercenary musicians in town were part of the deal. The result of Hester’s sessions with the "Taking Care (of) Business" band—famous for backing Elvis during this time—was Benny..., a modest collection of well-scrubbed baroque pop. At this time, Hester was forming his identity: The record is not fully secular, not explicitly the Word. It’s musical schematics are about as idiomatic for the time period as one can imagine: Opener "Give Your Love Forever" makes this immediately clear, mirroring the melody of Neil Young’s "Old Man," from that February’s Harvest. Later, the likenesses pile up more and more, from the precocious neo-classic pop of the Left Banke to pre-Rumours Lindsey Buckingham ("What’s Happened to My Friends”) to Chipmunk-ed Tumbleweed Connection-era Elton John ("The Painter").

Perhaps the album could have gotten some modest traction, if only in nu-Christian circles. But just after a literal handful of promos were sent out, the home of his label burned down, and Benny…’s masters along with it. Hester would make a proper debut in 1978, but he’s called the loss of his first, non-CCM record "the greatest disappointment that I’d ever had in my life." One wonders if the reason for the decades-long delay in the record’s release—remastered from errant vinyl copies—was more personal than practical. Now, 44 years later, Benny… sounds too odd in its delivery to imagine as anything other than a collector-championed footnote.

Its eccentric character comes from the tension between the naivete of Hester’s agile, high-tenor vocal—mired in his pronounced Southern drawl—and the TCB Band’s adept, chamber orchestra-enhanced arrangements. One can imagine what inchoate, less convincing solo acoustic demos might have sounded like, but guitarist James Burton and his cohort improve every song’s chances. One of the record’s most cloying compositions, "Love Never Dies," organizes around the Donovan-esque refrain of "Have you seen the people there/ They are speaking words of love/ From their souls." However, the song gains lustre from phantasmal string cushioning and a cascading, George Harrison-esque guitar solo.

Most of Benny…’s tracks are made more appealing by their sophisticated arrangements, though electric-piano-driven clodhopper "Malcombe," with its fidgety, Ren Faire aspect, is unsalvageable. A few songs feel like a musical triumph on every level, demonstrating Hester’s sensitive and detail-oriented ability with a melody. On tracks like highlight "No the End Is Not Near," beautifully voiced electric guitar and a lilting bassline highlight and complicate Hester’s simple strummed acoustic backdrop. The words are crammed awkwardly, avoiding rhymes that could have been pulled off with the help of a wilier co-lyricist. But without these kinks, Benny… would certainly lose some of its character.

There is a sadness listening back to Benny… knowing that it would be a false start rather than a fortuitous beginning. The singer/songwriter’s most famous work would merge deathly smooth, Kenny Loggins-esque funk with the sensibility of tragic-anthemic rock opera, articulating more somber Christian messages and narratives. Much of this music demonstrates a sharp pop prowess, but the sunnier, more pantheistic Benny… stands in contrast to it both lyrically and compositionally. It’s the charmingly transparent work of a fledgling singer-songwriter realizing his first group of songs, which offers as utopian a vision of its decade as "I’d like to buy the world a Coke." A slight, necessary edge is provided by allusions toward a slightly unsettled sense of faith ("The Bridge"). "I believe I’m about to change…Please let this be so," he sings late in the album, with saucer-eyed earnesty. Hester was indeed on the cusp of a change and a new becoming, but it was to be much more hard-won than he imagined.