<\/p>\n
AP:<\/b> <\/p>\n
Richard Smallwood, the gospel singer and eight-time Grammy-nominated recording artist, has died. He was 77. He passed away Tuesday from complications of kidney failure at a rehabilitation and nursing centre in Sandy Spring, Maryland, his representative Bill Carpenter announced.<\/p>\n
Smallwood had health issues for many years, and music gave him the strength to endure, Carpenter said in an interview.<\/p>\n
\u201cRichard was so dedicated to music, and that was the thing that kept him alive all these years,\u201d he said. \u201cMaking music that made people feel something is what made him want to keep breathing and keep moving and keep living.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smallwood\u2019s songs were performed and recorded over the years by artistes such as Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder, Destiny\u2019s Child and Boyz II Men.<\/p>\n
Smallwood \u201copened up my whole world of gospel music\u201d, singer and songwriter Chaka Khan wrote on Facebook after his death.<\/p>\n
\u201cHis music didn\u2019t just inspire me, it transformed me,\u201d she said. \u201cHe is my favourite pianist, and his brilliance, spirit, and devotion to the music have shaped generations, including my own journey.\u201d<\/p>\n
Smallwood was born November 30, 1948 in Atlanta and began to play piano by ear by the age of five, according to biographic materials provided by Carpenter. <\/p>\n
By age seven, 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, DC, by his mother, Mabel, and his stepfather, the Reverend Chester Lee \u2018C.L.\u2019 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\u2019s first gospel group, the Celestials. He was also a founding member of the university\u2019s 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. <\/p>\n
He later formed Vision, a large choir that fuelled some of his biggest gospel hits, including Total Praise<\/b>.<\/p>\n
That song 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 non-denominational 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. \u201cI am truly looking forward to singing with you in heaven,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\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 jamaica-gleaner.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" AP: Richard Smallwood, the gospel singer and eight-time Grammy-nominated recording artist, has died. He was 77. He passed away Tuesday from complications of kidney failure at a rehabilitation and nursing centre in Sandy Spring, Maryland, his representative Bill Carpenter announced. Smallwood had health issues for many years, and music gave him the strength to endure, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2218530,"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":[],"class_list":["post-2218529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/Gospel-singer-Richard-Smallwood-dies-remembered-for-timeless-hits.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218529","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=2218529"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218529\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2218531,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2218529\/revisions\/2218531"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2218530"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2218529"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2218529"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2218529"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}