It staggers me to realise that, after penning this blog for
almost 17 years now, I have only featured A. A. Allen’s incredible output once,
seven years ago when I posted
Crying Demons (now updated), a staple of
pretty much every ‘worst records’ list compiled.
Crying Demons is a classic noted, on the reverse of one of Allen’s many releases, as ‘one of the most amazing recordings of demons speaking through people who are possessed by them. Recorded in an actual service where A. A. Allen is actually casting out demons and these demons are talking and saying, “I will not come out; you cannot cast me out!” etc. A real lesson and Bible study in demonology. Convinces the worst skeptic that demons are not only real but that God has given His servant power over them. Proves demons are real today!’
Crying Demons was just one of the dozens of bizarre releases
from Pastor A. A. Allen’s Miracle Revival Recordings label, established in the
mid-1950s. Today, I present you with another of these wonderful curiosities, in full: Did God Call the Apostle Paul to Preach the Gospel to the Black Man?, noted as Allen's heartfelt attempt at integration. His shows were open to both Black and white audiences from the start, although in the years before the Civil Rights movement came to the fore, he often had trouble convincing Black audiences that they were welcome to participate, even though he was one of the first white preachers to tour with a Black gospel choir.
In that previous post I skirted over Allen's colourful life, but here is a more detailed version of his rather wild story, should you care to read it.
Asa Alonso Allen was born on 27 March 1911 (or possibly
1910) in Sulphur Springs, Arkansas. His parents, Asa and Leona, decided to name
him after his father and his father's uncle, a Presbyterian minister. And
that’s about all his real origin story and the Legend of Preacher Allen agree
on. The Young Asa was brought up with two brothers and four sisters, but the
children were neglected – both parents have been castigated in the ‘official’
story of Allen’s upbringing as ‘drunkards’ – and the Allen kids were raised in
poverty.
According to Allen’s own version of his backstory (or his
wife’s anyway: the source for most of his legend seems to come from her 1954
book God’s Man of Faith and Power), his parents made home brew liquor
behind their shack, and his mother is supposed to have continued to drink heavily
while she was pregnant with Allen. A favourite pastime of his parents was to
give Allen and his siblings some of their home brew liquor until they were
drunk. Then they would sit back and laugh at their children's drunken antics
until they would either fall down or pass out. Allen's mother reputedly filled
his bottle with liquor to keep him from crying, and he would go to bed nightly
with a baby bottle filled with the home brew.
Tobacco was also plentiful, and Allen claimed that he learned
to smoke before he was old enough to go to school. His father was a talented
musician, and the local church asked him to lead their choir. He usually did so,
according to family lore, while drunk. Young Allen caught hold of those talents
and sometimes stood on the street comer singing to the crowd for nickels, and
dimes.
Apparently all this happened before Asa was four years old,
as at that point his parents rocky relationship finally broke, and Mrs. Allen
took Asa and his siblings off to Carthage, Missouri, where she remarried:
another drunkard, unsurprisingly. One of his brothers died young, leaving his
mother and stepfather with six young mouths to feed. By the time he was in his
teens he left home for good, paying for his own liquor by picking cotton and
digging ditches. When the Great Depression hit, he started brewing and dealing
in bootleg booze, He returned home to his mother, and the two of them began to
operate an illicit speakeasy.
After hearing a woman preacher in Missouri in 1934, he began
to dedicate his life to God. His marriage to Lexie in 1936 and the arrival of
his first child strengthened his conviction and he decided to train for the
ministry, with Pentecostal denomination the Assembly of God.
It’s the perfect colourful story: a young man on the road to
hell finding redemption in the lord and mending his wicked ways, but although
there’s no denying Allen’s early life was rough, he clearly embellished the
drama to enhance his brand’s value. For Asa Alonso Allen was very much a brand,
and this is all grist to the mill when you’re headlining healing shows under a
tent that can sit up to 20,000 people at a time.
He began work as a healing, singing minister, but found it
difficult to support his growing family, and decided instead to take on a
permanent role in a church in Texas. Then, in 1950, he attended an Oral Roberts
tent revival meeting. Inspired, he began holding his own evangelistic meetings.
Soon it was being claimed that people attending his meetings were being healed
in their seats as he preached. In 1951 he bought his first tent: his touring
ministry was a massive success and by 1953 he was appearing regularly on radio
stations across the U.S., Mexico, Cuba, and Latin America.
Two years later, Allen was pulled over for drink driving in
Knoxville, Tennessee. He would later claim that someone had put something in
his drink at the local restaurant. The Assembly of God organisation asked him
to pull out of ministry for a period, and recommended that he be dropped from
their church. Allen claimed that he resigned from the AoG before they had
opportunity to ask him to leave, but the truth of the matter was that he was
defrocked by the AoG for ‘conduct unbecoming a minister’. Allen’s expulsion was
based on the fact that he jumped bail: according to a spokesman for Knox County
Criminal Court, Allen had been arrested by the highway patrol on a charge of driving
while under the influence of an intoxicant, but ‘the case did not come to trial
because Allen failed to appear, forfeited his $1,000 bail and left the State.
If ever enters Tennessee again, he can arrested and tried on the charge.’ Allen
simply told the press that ‘you cannot believe everything some jealous
preachers say!’
From here on in Allen would continue as an independent
minister. He started his own publication, Miracle Magazine, which by the
end of 1956 had over 200,000 subscribers. He began the Miracle Revival
Fellowship aimed at ordaining ministers and supporting missions, and founded
his own record label, Miracle Revival Recordings. He became one of the
first preachers to appear regularly on national television: at his peak, he
appeared on fifty-eight radio stations daily as well as forty-three TV
stations.
But controversy was never far away. He remained a heavy
drinker, yet Lexie would insist that the frequent attacks on her husband were
‘communistically inspired’. She took umbrage with newspaper the
Sacramento
Bee, whose investigation of her husband’s ministry following his arrest for
drink driving was scathing. It found one of the people Allen had ‘healed’, a
man who, it had been claimed, had only weeks to live as he had been invaded by
‘a cancer demon’. This man, brough to Allen in a wheelchair as he was unable to
walk, was in fact revealed by his doctor to be perfectly mobile and, although
he was indeed suffering from cancer, had several years of life left in him.
Lexie Allen was apoplectic: the paper was in league with the
devil, she stated, and was trying to quiet Allen for the paper's own ‘Communist
purposes,’. She claimed too that the newspaper was under ‘Communist control.’ Her
ire was magnified by a quote which appeared in the newspaper from the American
Medical Association, which made reference to the many faith healers who carried
‘shills’ as part of their entourages who would be miraculously healed in the
tent service, dramatically throwing away their crutches and praising Allen for
his incredible healing powers.
Allen’s staff backed up their claims of their boss’s powers
by stating that he had caused an earthquake in California after being refused
use of a civic auditorium there. They warned the editors of the Bee that
they should watch out for the vengeance that was coming their way.
The Bee continued on its mission, calling Allen’s
travelling show ‘a burlesque, and a parody of true religion… redolent with
claims of healings which are purely imaginary.’ Their work caused many
headaches for the Allen organisation, but they recovered from them. In 1958, in
Phoenix, a local rancher gifted his 1,280 acre ranch to Allen: at the time of
his death, following further donations of land, Allen’s Miracle Valley
headquarters covered 2,400 acres of Arizona and even had its own
airfield.
Nothing seemed to touch him. In 1959 he was sued for unpaid
taxes by the IRS, but successfully petitioned that his organisation A. A. Allen
Revivals, Inc., was exempt as a corporation ‘organised and operated exclusively
for religious and educational purposes with no part of its net earnings inuring
to the benefit of any private shareholder or individual.’
In 1965 – three years after his divorce from Lexie - the
charismatic Allen visited Britain to host a series of revival meetings. It did
not go well. He had his fans, but newspapers castigated his showy approach. The
following year, after further shenanigans in Toronto, Nottingham’s Evening
Post and News reported that as well as laying hands on the sick for healing,
Allen ‘sends out blessed handkerchiefs or pieces of his old revival tent which
are said to bring health and prosperity to those receive them. An advertisement
in Allen’s Miracle magazine asks for pledges of $100 or $1000 for “a
prosperity cloth cut from the old white Miracle Tent”. Another ad in the same
magazine assures the reader that, through faith, he can get anything he wants
from God by clipping a coupon and sending it, with a donation, “to Brother
Allen for prayer in my behalf”. You could even buy the sand scooped up from apart
of Allen’s revival tent ‘where several people saw Jesus walking’.
Allen died on 11 June 1970, in a hotel room in San
Francisco, officially of ‘acute alcoholism and fatty infiltration of the liver.’
It has been reported that police found his body in a ‘room strewn with pills
and empty liquor bottles,’ although perhaps unsurprisingly some – including
family members - have claimed that the coroner falsified the report after
receiving a bribe. Followers tried to keep the business going, but by the end
of the decade the Allen organisation was declared bankrupt.
Here, in its entirety, is another one of the many controversial albums issued by Miracle Revival Recordings, 'A. A. Allen's Famous Sermon On Integration', Did God Call The Apostle Paul To Preach The Gospel To The Black Man? Issued in the mid-60s, side two features Allen's regular singer, the rather excellent Gene Martin who, following Allen's death, toured the US with his own ministry the Gene Martin Action Revival.
Enjoy!
Download Side One HERE
Download Side Two HERE
