Put Your Hand in the Hand
| "Put Your Hand in the Hand" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Ocean | ||||
| from the album Put Your Hand in the Hand | ||||
| B-side | "Tear Down the Fences" | |||
| Released | February 1971 | |||
| Genre | Pop, gospel | |||
| Length | 2:52 3:53 – Remix 2006  | |||
| Label | Kama Sutra | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Gene MacLellan | |||
| Producer(s) | Greg Brown, Ocean | |||
| Ocean singles chronology | ||||
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| Audio | ||||
| "Put Your Hand in the Hand" (single edit) on YouTube | ||||
"Put Your Hand in the Hand" is a gospel pop song composed by Gene MacLellan and first recorded by Canadian singer Anne Murray in 1970 on her third studio album, Honey, Wheat and Laughter.
It became a hit single for the Canadian band Ocean, released as their debut single and title track to their 1971 debut album. The song peaked at No. 2 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, kept from No. 1 by "Joy to the World" by Three Dog Night. It remained in the top 10 for seven weeks, and was ranked as the No. 33 song for 1971 according to Billboard. The song also reached No. 4 on the Adult Contemporary chart. The band received fan mail for the song from religious figures such as Billy Graham and the Bishop of Toronto.
After MacLellan's suicide in 1995, his friend and fellow Atlantic Canadian musician Ron Hynes wrote the song "Godspeed" as a tribute, the lyrics for which reference the title of this song.
The song was inducted into the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame in 2006. A remix from the same year adds an instrumental, which occurs between the second chorus and the second verse, as well as a repeat of the chorus and a final instrumentalist chorus, that ends without the fade.