The Daily Times

“We didn’t have a whole lot of things, but we had a whole lot of God.”

Those words still ring in the memory of Maryville man Macel Ely II. It was a favorite quote, used often by his great-uncle Brother Claude Ely when describing the faith that sustained him as a young man growing up in the Appalachian Mountains.

Brother Claude is legendary in Pentecostal circles as a traveling preacher, singer and songwriter. For nearly 30 years, Brother Claude ministered in the Appalachian heartland of eastern Kentucky, east Tennessee and southwestern Virginia. Eventually he pastored Charity Tabernacle Pentecostal church in suburban Cincinnati. Brother Claude’s music is said to have been a primary influence on early rock and roll. Elvis Presley even adapted and recorded some of Brother Claude’s songs for his own albums.

But the root of Brother Claude’s music was his ministry — a ministry that was birthed in the mountains of Appalachia and raised up in a Pentecostal faith that withstood the harsh realities of life in the mountains.

“These mountain people really did have tough lives,” Ely says. “But what they had was more important than anything else they could have achieved or ascertained in life, and that was God.”

Story of faith

Over the course of nine years and thousands of personal interviews, Macel Ely came to know the lives and stories of these mountain people. He found that the story of the mountains and the mountain people was one of faith — faith that wasn’t just strong enough to move mountains, but strong enough to live there.

This mountain faith is a personal heritage for Ely. He’s an ordained Pentecostal minister, in a family of Pentecostal preachers. At a recent family reunion, his family tallied up something like 50 active ministers in the family today.

“I’m a fifth generation Pentecostal,” Ely says. “I like to say, ‘Not by name, but by experience.’”

As a member of Brother Claude Ely’s family, he was familiar with tales of his great-uncle’s Pentecostal ministry. He was so used to the stories that he’d come to imagine most of them as family folklore.

All that changed in 2001, in a shop in London, England. Ely heard his great-uncle’s music being played over the store’s sound system. When the shopkeeper learned Ely was a relative of Brother Claude, he peppered him with questions. As it turned out, Brother Claude’s music was a big seller, and music fans of all ages and creeds were scrambling to buy recordings of this Pentecostal music.

Seeing firsthand the interest of people in his great-uncle’s music, Ely set out to uncover the story of Brother Claude. The result is “Ain’t No Grave: the Life and Legacy of Brother Claude Ely.” The book and CD set was released in 2010 under the Atlanta-based imprint Dust-to-Digital.

As Ely worked on his book, he became acutely aware of the influence of faith on his own heritage. He also felt himself being challenged, as a man of faith, to a deeper understanding of what his faith meant to him.

“I think that was a big challenge to me in this research,” he says. “I realized that in a few years, these elderly people — they’re all going to be gone from these mountains. And who does that leave? And I came to the conclusion that it’s my generation. Will our faith sustain the generations that come up behind us? And I hope the answer is yes.”

Research pays off

In writing about his great-uncle, Macel Ely II has told the story of a community bound together by faith. That faith continues to inspire much as it did 60 years ago. Brother Claude Ely’s music reaches a new generation as his popularity grows. And his witness continues to inspire. Actor Stephen Baldwin took time during a recent CNN interview to point out Ely’s book as something that is inspiring him in his own faith.

Ely’s book and CD are also receiving recognition as an historical document. The work has been selected as a finalist for the 2011 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Awards for Excellence in Historical Research in Recorded Sound. ARSC specializes in preserving music and music history, and the award recognizes outstanding published research in recorded sound.

For Ely, though, that recognition is secondary to what he’s learned about his own inheritance of faith, and the responsibility he feels for keeping that heritage of faith alive in his own daily life.

“I have to make a daily decision to remember that and keep that as a central focus. And I believe Brother Claude Ely did that too. He was very focused on realizing that his time was short here on Earth. And he wanted to maximize his time here on Earth, living a life that would be pleasing to the Lord.”

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