Richard Smallwood, influential gospel composer and singer, dies at 77

Gospel Music Fever™

(Sandy Spring, MD) Richard Smallwood, an eight-time Grammy® Award nominated, classically trained composer and gospel recording artist, died on Tuesday, December 30, at 12:36 AM, at the Brooke Grove Rehabilitation and Nursing Center. He died of complications of kidney failure. He was 77.

Over the last five decades, Smallwood has written some of the biggest songs of the gospel music genre such as “I Love the Lord,” which was remade by Whitney Houston and the Georgia Mass Choir for 1996’s The Preacher’s Wife soundtrack, and Boyz II Men’s 1997 album, Evolution, closed with a song “Dear God” that included a refrain of it. “Total Praise” was covered by Destiny’s Child on their 2007 a acapella track, “Gospel Medley.” With The Richard Smallwood Singers and later Vision, Smallwood enjoyed his own hits with “I Love the Lord” and “Total Praise” as well as “Center of My Joy,” “Anthem of Praise” and “I’ll Trust You.” 

Smallwood was born November 30, 1948, in Atlanta, GA, but was primarily raised in Washington, D.C. by his mother, Mabel and his stepfather, Rev. Chester Lee “CL” Smallwood, who was pastor of Union Temple Baptist Church in southeast Washington, D.C. He began to play piano by ear by the age of five. By seven, he was taking formal lessons and by eleven, he had formed his own gospel group. Roberta Flack was one of his high school teachers prior to launching her recording career with Atlantic Records.

Smallwood graduated cum laude from Howard University with a degree in music. He developed friendships with fellow classmates Donny Hathaway, Debbie Allen, and Phylicia Rashad. He was a member of Howard’s first gospel group, the Celestials, who were reputed to be the first gospel group to sing at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland. Smallwood was also one of the founding members of Howard University’s Gospel Choir. Following college, Smallwood taught music at the University of Maryland for a while.

Eventually, he founded the Richard Smallwood Singers in 1977, inspired after seeing the Edwin Hawkins Singers perform live. The group brought a progressive, contemporary sound to gospel music. They performed throughout the Washington, D.C. area before they were signed to Onyx Records (the black gospel division of Benson Records) in 1982. Their debut LP, The Richard Smallwood Singers, spent 87 weeks on Billboard magazine’s Spiritual Albums sales chart. With lead vocals fluctuating between the charismatic Dottie Jones, the smoldering Jackie Ruffin, the earthquaking Darlene Simmons, and Smallwood’s dry tenor, they created a distinct sound that caught on with middle-class, mostly black Christian young adults. Whereas most gospel artists of the period appealed to an older crowd, the Smallwood Singers enjoyed a young, educated following.

Their 1984 LP, Psalms, hit #1 on Billboard’s Spiritual Albums sales chart and earned them a Grammy® award nomination. They moved over to Word Records’ Rejoice black division for the 1987 LP, Textures, which peaked at No. 7 on the same chart and produced the biggest hit of the group’s career with the ballad, “Center of My Joy.” Composed by Smallwood with Bill and Gloria Gaither, the song had a soft pop feel that built to a rousing gospel crescendo with a background vocal arrangement alternating between a classical chorale sound and a passionate gospel blowout. It was the first song to introduce Smallwood to the white Christian community and has since been covered by artists as diverse as Ron Kenoly, Tanya Goodman-Sykes, and the Sensational Nightingales. The group’s popularity led to an invitation to perform in the Soviet Union – reportedly the first gospel group to do a concert tour of the country at the time in the late 1980s. 

The group also supplied background vocals for soul/gospel music legend Candi Staton on her 1988 LP, Love Lifted Me, and her 1989 album, Stand Up and Be a Witness. Smallwood shadowed Staton’s vocals on the title cut of the latter project. Smallwood was also among the all-star choir that backed Quincy Jones’ Handel’s Messiah – A Soulful Celebration album in 1992.

By the early 1990s, the Smallwood Singers had left Word Records for a brief tenure with Sparrow Records before finally landing at Jive/Verity Records (now RCA Inspiration).  “I’ve been with every major gospel label that there is,” he once said. “I’ve been able to compare different labels and the way that things are done – the support or lack of. I’ve been in the position of the new kid on the block, where the importance or focus was put on the names that were known better than I was at the time, and all the energy was put on them….the label just did not give me the support, and that’s a frustrating feeling because you have a lot of ideas and concepts that you’d like to see, and you go to the label and say, `hey, I’ve got this idea about marketing or promotion’ and they say `well, we’ll see’ and they just kind of put [the record] out there, and if it makes it, it makes it on its own, without any serious support from the label. I’ve been there.”

With his new label home, Smallwood disbanded the Smallwood Singers. He formed a large backing choir named Vision that he featured on a string of albums that produced gospel radio hits such as “Angels” and “Total Praise.” The lush, near-classical “Total Praise” was introduced in 2001 and has become Smallwood’s biggest and most unexpected hit. “My mother was ill, and my godbrother was terminally ill with brain cancer,” he told a reporter on the red carpet at the 2014 BMI Trailblazer Awards, where he was honored.  “So, I was feeling helpless in terms of what I could do as a caregiver.  And God just sort of gave me that song in the middle of all that, which really gave me a peace about the whole thing and let me know that he was still in control of the situation. So, it came to me in a very difficult time of my life, but certainly I had no idea it was going to have the impact that it had.”

Smallwood’s 2007 album, Journey: Live in New York, featured performances from Chaka Khan, The Hawkins Family, Kelly Price, and Kim Burrell. Smallwood’s final album, Anthology, was released in 2015 and featured the Gospel radio hit, “Same God.” In 2019, Smallwood published a book, Total Praise: The Autobiography, which detailed Smallwood family secrets as well as his personal battles with grief and depression.

In the last few years, a variety of health issues have prevented Smallwood from recording. In his darkest days, he always referenced music as a solace and a method of ministry. “I don’t know that I have all the answers or any of the answers,” he once said in a 1993 Washington Post interview. “But being a minister of music, I need to be open to listen and give a word of encouragement through songs of testimony. Singing is only part of it. The ministry itself is much more than that.” Aside from eight Grammy® Award nominations, Smallwood earned three Dove Awards and multiple Stellar Gospel Music Awards.

Smallwood is survived by his brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, and several godchildren.

– From a media release

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