Richard Smallwood, a gospel singer and recording artist nominated eight occasions for Grammy Awards, has died. He was 77.
Smallwood died Tuesday of issues of kidney failure at a rehabilitation and nursing heart in Sandy Spring, Maryland, his consultant Invoice Carpenter introduced.
Smallwood had well being points for a few years, and music gave him the power to endure, Carpenter mentioned in an interview.
“Richard was so devoted to music, and that was the factor that stored him alive all these years,” he mentioned. “Making music that made individuals really feel one thing is what made him wish to hold respiration and hold transferring and hold residing.”
Smallwood’s songs had been carried out and recorded through the years by artists similar to Whitney Houston, Stevie Marvel, Future’s Baby and Boyz II Males. Houston introduced his music to movie by performing “I Love the Lord” within the 1996 film The Preacher’s Spouse, based on Smallwood’s biography on the Gospel Music Corridor of Fame.
Smallwood “opened up my complete world of gospel music,” singer and songwriter Chaka Khan wrote on Fb after his demise.
“His music didn’t simply encourage me, it reworked me,” she mentioned. “He’s my favourite pianist, and his brilliance, spirit, and devotion to the music have formed generations, together with my very own journey.”
Smallwood was born Nov. 30, 1948, in Atlanta and started to play piano by ear by the age of 5, based on biographic supplies supplied by Carpenter. By age 7, he was taking formal classes. He had fashioned his personal gospel group by the point he was 11.
He was primarily raised in Washington, D.C., by his mom, Mabel, and his stepfather, the Rev. Chester Lee “C.L.” Smallwood. His stepfather was the pastor of Union Temple Baptist Church in Washington.
Smallwood was a music pioneer in a number of methods at Howard College in Washington, the place he graduated cum laude with a music diploma. He was a member of Howard’s first gospel group, the Celestials. He was additionally a founding member of the college’s gospel choir, based on an obituary from Carpenter.
After school, Smallwood taught music on the College of Maryland and went on to kind the Richard Smallwood Singers in 1977, bringing a recent sound to conventional gospel music. He later fashioned Imaginative and prescient, a big choir that fueled a few of his largest gospel hits, together with “Complete Reward.”
“Complete Reward” turned a modern-day hymn that touched individuals from all varieties of backgrounds and walks of life, Carpenter mentioned by telephone Wednesday.
“You may go into any form of church — a Black church, a white church, a nondenominational church — and also you may hear that tune,” he mentioned. “In some way it discovered its footing all through the entire Christian world. If he by no means wrote anything, that might have put him within the trendy hymn e book.”
Marvel carried out “Complete Reward” on the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr.’s son Dexter Scott King at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta on Feb. 10, 2024.
Lately, gentle dementia and different well being points prevented Smallwood from recording music, and members of his Imaginative and prescient choir helped take care of him.
His legacy will dwell on “by way of each word and each soul he touched,” Khan mentioned.
“I’m actually trying ahead to singing with you in heaven,” she mentioned.