Billy Preston is usually viewed as a fringe personality, or at best, superstar sideman. This album is an attempt to set the record straight: Preston is, in fact, a closet gospel monger. This is hardly surprising considering his early Apple artifacts ("That's the Way God Planned It"), though it isn't so easy to reconcile such sentiments with doing the bump with Mick Jagger.

Nor does the music particularly evoke religious zeal, unless ersatz funk and moral pedantry fit your notion of gospel music. Preston's always been a lazy composer, content to endlessly recycle a catchy phrase in the hope that listeners will confuse it with a hook (witness Black and Blue's "Melody"). In that respect, this record provides no evidence of growth. Indeed, examples of teasing fragments, shamelessly padded, literally abound. Even the tantalizing salsa excursion, "Bad Case of Ego" (sporting the classic line, "You got your ass on your shoulders/Where it does not belong"), falls prey to a pointless, dizzy chorus. In all fairness, though, he's never sung better; the jazzy, low-range crooning on "Bells" is an unqualified delight and the sassy, sexy readings of "Do What You Want" and "Simplify Your Life" show that he learned more than the tango from Jagger.

But in the end, too many mistaken syllogisms (I wasn't together; I found an answer, i.e., Jesus; you haven't found Jesus; therefore, you aren't together) and his gratuitous counseling belie Preston's claim to gospel spirit. Billy Preston gives no clearer picture of its subject than a frame does a painting. Like Stevie Wonder, he has contorted a guileless pose into a pretentious guise. (RS 230)

MIKAL GILMORE