Chaka Khan<\/a> wrote on Facebook after his death.<\/p>\n\u201cHis music didn\u2019t just inspire me, it transformed me,\u201d she said. \u201cHe is my favorite pianist, and his brilliance, spirit, and devotion to the music have shaped generations, including my own journey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smallwood was born Nov. 30, 1948, in Atlanta and began to play piano by ear by the age of 5, according to biographic materials provided by Carpenter. By age 7, he was taking formal lessons. He had formed his own gospel group by the time he was 11.<\/p>\n
He was primarily raised in Washington, D.C., by his mother, Mabel, and his stepfather, the Rev. Chester Lee \u201cC.L.\u201d Smallwood. His stepfather was the pastor of Union Temple Baptist Church in Washington.<\/p>\n
Smallwood was a music pioneer in multiple ways at Howard University in Washington, where he graduated cum laude with a music degree. He was a member of Howard’s first gospel group, the Celestials. He was also a founding member of the university’s gospel choir, according to an obituary from Carpenter.<\/p>\n
After college, Smallwood taught music at the University of Maryland and went on to form the Richard Smallwood Singers in 1977, bringing a contemporary sound to traditional gospel music. He later formed Vision, a large choir that fueled some of his biggest gospel hits, including \u201cTotal Praise.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTotal Praise\u201d became a modern-day hymn that touched people from all types of backgrounds and walks of life, Carpenter said by phone Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can go into any kind of church \u2014 a Black church, a white church, a nondenominational church \u2014 and you might hear that song,\u201d he said. \u201cSomehow it found its footing throughout the whole Christian world. If he never wrote anything else, that would have put him in the modern hymn book.\u201d<\/p>\n
In recent years, mild dementia and other health issues prevented Smallwood from recording music, and members of his Vision choir helped care for him.<\/p>\n
His legacy will live on \u201cthrough every note and every soul he touched,\u201d Khan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am truly looking forward to singing with you in heaven,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.<\/p>\n
\u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.wsls.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richard Smallwood, a gospel singer and recording artist nominated eight times for Grammy Awards, has died. He was 77. Smallwood died Tuesday of complications of kidney failure at a rehabilitation and nursing center in Sandy Spring, Maryland, his representative Bill Carpenter announced. Smallwood had health issues for many years, and music gave him the strength […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2217988,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[428839,364670,428840,21741,315711,428841,428838,324405,30188,37098],"class_list":["post-2217987","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-bill-carpenter","tag-chaka-khan","tag-chester-lee","tag-entertainment","tag-religion","tag-richard-smallwood","tag-sandy-spring","tag-stevie-wonder","tag-u-s-news","tag-whitney-houston"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/Gospel-singer-Richard-Smallwood-dies-at-77-leaving-a-legacy.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217987","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2217987"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2217989,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2217987\/revisions\/2217989"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2217988"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2217987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2217987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2217987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}