SONG.REVIEWS
Bristol, Tennessee-born singer and television host best known for 1955's "Sixteen Tons." His 1956 gospel album Hymns, recorded during his run hosting NBC's The Ford Show, became the first religious album certified Gold and spent 277 consecutive weeks on Billboard's Top Pop Albums chart.
Tennessee Ernie Ford's 1956 recording, from the first religious album ever certified Gold, treats Augustus Toplady's 18th-century text as plainly as a man closing out his own weekly television broadcast -- which, at the time, he was.
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