![]() It’s a holy ruckus, a whole lotta shaking, the sacred music of the mountains and the hot fever of boogie. More than six decades later, cooped up in my house in the midst of a plague, I am yipping and whooping along. The assembled worshipers begin to clap, on the off beat in the Pentecostal way, punctuated by the yips and whoops of the faithful. Ely, a former coal miner, sounds like he’s hollering from the bottom of a cave. To say they’re singing doesn’t do justice to the noise they’re making they sound like pilgrims in distress. ![]() ![]() Backup singers-likely young women from Ely’s family and followers of his ministry-join in the frenzy. ” And then the flood: The word “grave” drags and rattles in Ely’s throat as he slaps out percussive chords on his acoustic guitar, “an up-and-down, up-and-down-type rhythm like you’re painting a house” as a musician who played with him would later put it. ![]() ![]() Brother Claude Ely, surrounded by a gathering of the Pentecostal-Holiness faithful who have come to hear the traveling preacher lead a revival meeting at the Letcher County courthouse in Kentucky, gently plucks the guitar strings and intones the first three syllables: “There. The Gospel According to Brother Claude Ely ![]()
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