Hymns A'Swinging - The Ted Taylor Organsound Featuring Tubby Hayes And The Mike Sammes Singers

Wherever pop-culture goes, you can bet your bottom-denari that Christianity will get there next.

In the late 1960s, apparently spotting a gap in the UK top twenty, record producer David Moses decided to plunder the church's best-known hymns to give them the trendy modern treatment.

The result was an LP that featured the 12 grooviest glorifications ever to redeem the evils of, as Reverend Lovejoy might put it, rock and/or roll.

It all sounds like a surefire recipe for hilarity, but here's the thing - this album packs so much conviction that it actually carries the whole thing off. Whether you dig hymns or not, this is a joy-filled trip back to the 1960s, with all its organs, drums, flutes and even psychedelic echoey sitars, if that's your scene, dad.

The roving track 8 - "to BEEE a Pil-Grim." - has an amazing organ outro that fades-out just far, far too early man.

Conversely track 9 - Immortal Invisible God Only Wise - is so twee as to sound like the animated theme to a TV sitcom from that decade.

"Thou reignest in glory;
Thou dwellest in light;
Thine angels adore thee,
All veiling their sight;
All laud we would render:
O help us to see
'Tis only the splendor of light hideth thee."

(Tonight, God convinces Moses to invest in a get-saved-quick scheme. But things go wrong when the entire country gets lost in the desert for 40 years… with hilarious consequences!)

Track 11 - O Worship The King - sounds like a fusion of the 5th Dimension's Up, Up And Away with the best kind of testcard music.

By the time I got to the final number - a particularly worthy rendition of Praise To The Lord - my brain was conjuring up monochrome 16mm images of Routemaster buses, Co-Op milk floats, and beaming synchronised dancers thrusting their arms forward and excitedly waggling their fingers.

Now, thank God, the ever joy-filled Trunk label has seen fit to re-issue this recording of heavenly blessings, complete with original sleeve notes and scans of the actual vinyl labels from the centre, just in case you should feel compelled to rotate them while listening. Heck, (I think that's the correct terminology) even the CD itself has been designed with a sincere love of the era:


If only more churches actually were this stuck in the past…

Track listing:

1. Harvest Home
2. Hills Of The North
3. 40 Days And 40 Nights
4. For All The Saints
5. All Things Bright And Beautiful
6. Bright The Vision That Delighted
7. Glorious Things Of Thee Are Spoken
8. He Who Would Valient Be
9. Immortal Invisible God Only Wise
10. O Jesus I Have Promised
11. O Worship The King
12. Praise To The Lord

Available to sample / download here…or on CD here.
(I recommend track 5)