Song of the Day 11/10: The Doobie Brothers, “Jesus Is Just Alright”
Kanye West is raising hackles these days not just for supporting Donald Trump but Jesus as well, revealing a glaring hole in his understanding of both, but it’s not as if the Nazarene has never invaded the pop charts before. Back in the early ’70s a nation shaken by the violent end of the ’60s went through a “Jesus freak” period — counter-culture types who found solace in Western religion rather than the Eastern traditions that many British musicians tapped into.
That was the context in which the Doobie Brothers, nobody’s idea of Jesus freaks, released this song in 1972, when it reached No. 35 on the pop charts but received more radio airplay than that ranking suggests.
The lyrics might obscure the song’s message — saying that Jesus is “just alright” makes it sound like he’s being compared to a better deity. But it was written by gospel tunesmith Arthur Reid Reynolds back in 1966, when “all right!” was a positive exclamation, as in “All right, outasight!” He recorded it with his Art Reynolds Singers.
The Doobies weren’t even the first pop group to tackle the song. The Byrds included a cover on their “Ballad of Easy Rider” LP in 1969. As a single it bared scraped the charts (No. 97), but the Doobies’ hit is pretty clearly based on the Byrds arrangement.
