Give Me Jesus was released on Larry Cordle’s own MightyCord label on March 24, 2017, and is his first all-gospel album. Cordle is best known as the co-writer, with Larry Shell, of “Murder on Music Row,” and several songs here are his own. “This Blood’s for You” and “Lost as a Ball in High Weeds” are co-writes with Shell, the second first heard on his 2003 album Songs from the Workbench. “The Old Thing’s Walkin’ About,” also with Shell, grew out of a story from his family about an uncle who woke up to what he took for angels singing and was in fact a gospel group driving past with speakers on the car roof. “Gone On Before,” written with Ronnie Bowman after both men had lost their mothers, had appeared on his album Pud Marcum’s Hangin’, with the words adjusted here so that they no longer refer to a mother.
The arrangements are mostly guitar, mandolin and bass, with no banjo or fiddle. Clay Hess plays guitar and mandolin, Brennan Hess and Irl Hees play bass, and Rob Ickes plays Weissenborn slide guitar, notably on the opening “Two Coats,” where Don Rigsby sings tenor. Carl Jackson, Jerry Salley, Bradley Walker and Val Storey sing on various tracks; Angela Primm and Gale Mayes add spiritual-style harmonies on “The Old Thing’s Walkin’ About.” Albert Brumley’s “I’ll Meet You in the Morning” is sung a cappella by a quartet Cordle calls the Joyful Noise Quartet: Cordle on lead, Jackson on tenor, Storey on high baritone and Walker on bass. On Carl Story’s “It’s a Lonesome Road,” Carl Jackson’s father, Lethal Jackson, sings the lead on the verses; Cordle had learned the song from him.
Give Me Jesus was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Roots Gospel Album.
Tracklist
- 1 Two Coats alt version 3:28
- 2 Give Me Jesus 2:39
- 3 It's a Lonesome Road 2:32
- 4 I’ll Meet You in the Morning alt version 3:08
- 5 The Old Things Walkin' About 3:37
- 6 This Blood's for You 3:44
- 7 God Had a Hand in It 2:31
- 8 Gone on Before 3:51
- 9 Lost as a Ball in High Weeds 4:27
- 10 Old Ship of Zion alt version 2:11
- 11 The First Step to Heaven 3:09
- 12 Family Bible alt version 3:31
- 13 When You Pray, Will You Pray for Me 1:12
- 14 It Isn't over When This Life Is Over 1:21
