We’re living life on this earth for eternity.” But they explained that, with Christ, you could finish your race here on this earth and that we aren’t living for this life. They didn’t play that once you became a Christian that life was going to be easy.
And it’s just the raw reality of their faith. “We’re kind of missing the element that I think these mountain people had. “There’s a stereotype now that religion is superficial, and it’s very plush,” Ely says. He found that the story of the mountains and the mountain people was one of faith – faith that wasn’t just strong enough to move mountains but strong enough to live there. Over nine years and through thousands of personal interviews, Macel Ely came to know the lives and stories of these mountain ancestors of his. Brother Claude’s music also influenced Ray Charles, Johnny Cash, and many others of their era.īut the root of Brother Claude’s music was his ministry – a ministry that was birthed in the mountains of Appalachia and raised in a Pentecostal faith that withstood the harsh realities of life in the mountains.
Elvis Presley was raised in the Pentecostal church and even adapted and recorded some of Brother Claude’s songs for his albums. Eventually, he pastored Charity Tabernacle Pentecostal church in suburban Cincinnati.īrother Claude’s music is said to have been a primary influence on early rock and roll. For nearly thirty years, Brother Claude ministered in eastern Kentucky, east Tennessee, and southwestern Virginia in the Appalachian heartland.
It was a favorite quote, used often by his great-uncle Brother Claude Ely to describe the faith that sustained him as a young man growing up in the Appalachian Mountains.īrother Claude is legendary in Pentecostal circles as a traveling preacher, singer, and songwriter. Those words still ring in the memory of Maryville man Macel Ely II. “We didn’t have a whole lot of things, but we had a whole lot of God.”
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