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Brother Claude Ely recorded some of the most powerful and emotional Gospel songs ever made. Known sometimes as the Gospel Ranger, Ely spent nearly thirty years as a minister in the Appalachian heartland of eastern Kentucky, east Tennessee, southwestern Virginia, and eventually to a migrant community in suburban Cincinnati. His early efforts on the King label-recorded during Kentucky mountain religious services-preserve some excellent and spontaneous music from the white Holiness and Pentecostal traditions. Claude Ely was born in a mountain homestead some five miles from Pennington Gap, Virginia. At 12, physicians diagnosed him as suffering from tuberculosis, which they believed terminal, but he subsequently recovered. However, during his illness, he began to play musical instruments, although he had no prior experience. Ely subsequently worked as a coal miner and served in the U.S. Army during WWII. Afterwards, he returned home, had a conversion experience and worked in the mines until 1949, when he received a call to preach. For the next sixteen years Brother Claude conducted numerous revivals and pastored churches in such mountain towns as Sneedville, Tennessee; Grundy, Virginia; and Cumberland, Kentucky. During his pastorate at the Free Pentecostal Church of God in Cumberland, he recorded two sessions for King Records, the first apparently taken from a remote broadcast in the church to a radio station in Whitesburg, Kentucky, on October 12, 1953 and the second from a recording made at a revival meeting in the local Letcher County Courthouse the following June. According to J.D. Jarvis, who was present, Ely initially had some reservations about commercially recording in a studio, but finally decided to permit cutting the material in an actual service and put them on disc. A total of fifteen numbers were recorded at both services although only eight appeared on single releases, but their uniqueness has long impressed folklorists and students of Appalachian religious traditions. Brother Claude’s rendition of songs like Holy, Holy, Holy (That’s All Right), There’s A Leak In This Old Building and especially There Ain’t No Grave Gonna Hold My Body Down are outstanding and the latter number went on to become something of a standard in the Gospel field. Claude Ely continued not only to conduct revivals and Gospel sings, but also to minister churches. In 1962 and in 1968, he again recorded for King, but this time in a more conventional studio setting. Meanwhile his pastorate took him to Charity Tabernacle in Newport, Kentucky-within the Cincinnati metropolitan area-where he spent the last thirteen years of his life. Not long after his last session at King, Brother Claude recorded an album at Rusty York’s Jewel studio, backed by local Gospel musicians such as Dennis Hensley, Bill Miles, Herschel Lively, J.D. Jarvis and Herman Crisp. He released it on his own Gold Star label. Ely suffered a heart attack in September 1977, but seemingly recovered. At that time, he began to tape many of his own unrecorded compositions for preservation. This proved to be a wise move because he suffered a fatal heart attack the following May and died during a service at his church. His daughter assembled an album and a sermon from these home recordings and they were released on Dennis Hensley’s Jordan label in 1979. Several latter-day Appalachian Gospel singers trace varying influences to Brother Claude and his music, including Robert Akers, Tommy Crank, Joe Freeman and J.D. Jarvis. Interest in his music persists and in 1993, the British label Ace released a compact disc containing his entire 1953 and 1954 sessions, including the talking, sermonettes and unreleased cuts, as well as a few of his numbers from 1962.
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