Songs of Pain That Last
Richard Smallwood’s obituary sketches a portrait of a classically trained gospel composer who fused Baroque flourishes with Black church traditions to create enduring, widely covered songs. It centers his role as a pioneering “progressive” gospel figure whose music reached from Washington sanctuaries to the pop charts.
The article opens with his death at 77 in Sandy Spring, Maryland, noting that complications of kidney failure ended the life of a musician whose work was recorded by stars like Stevie Wonder, Destiny’s Child and Whitney Houston. It situates his rise in the late 1970s with the Richard Smallwood Singers, a group that helped bring contemporary gospel into the mainstream.
His 1982 debut album with the Richard Smallwood Singers is highlighted for spending 87 weeks on the Billboard Gospel chart, signaling both commercial impact and staying power. The piece stresses that while his lyrics remained explicitly religious, his harmonic language borrowed heavily from classical and secular styles, which broadened his audience but drew skepticism from traditionalists.
Smallwood’s refusal to dilute references to Jesus and God for crossover play is framed as a core artistic conviction. He is quoted warning that when labels strip out the theological message to fit pop radio, “it’s actually not a gospel song anymore,” a stance that underscores his insistence on spiritual integrity over commercial compromise.
The obituary underscores his versatility: he wrote and arranged the music, played piano and sang baritone, accumulating eight Grammy nominations and four Dove Awards from the Gospel Music Association. Houston’s choice of his “I Love the Lord” for “The Preacher’s Wife” soundtrack, a record that sold nearly three million copies, is presented as a key moment that cemented his influence in mainstream gospel history.
In later years, Smallwood spoke candidly about living with clinical depression, describing how he learned to channel feelings of abandonment and inadequacy into his compositions. The article uses “Total Praise” as a prime example, explaining that he wrote it while caring for his aging mother and a friend dying of cancer, transforming what began as a “pity-party song” into a declaration of trust in God.
Biographical sections trace his roots to Atlanta, where he was born in 1948, and then to Washington, D.C., where his father founded Union Temple Baptist Church. The piece does not shy away from tension at home: it notes that his father regularly beat him even as church music life provided an early training ground for his calling.
His mother, a lover of classical music, emerges as the formative influence who took him to National Symphony Orchestra concerts and bought him a baby grand piano before he turned 10. Late in her life she revealed that the pastor who raised him was not his biological father but that Smallwood was the product of an affair with another preacher, adding a jolt of personal drama and ambiguity to his origin story.
The article connects him to broader Black musical lineages through his education at Howard University, where classmates included Phylicia Rashad, Donny Hathaway and Debbie Allen. It also notes that he was encouraged in high school by a young teacher, Roberta Flack, who would later become a chart-topping artist in her own right.
Professionally, Smallwood spent years teaching private lessons and directing the Union Temple choir before founding the Richard Smallwood Singers in 1977. The group released eight albums between 1982 and 1996, after which he disbanded it and formed Vision, a new ensemble that continued until declining health forced him to step back.
His public profile is marked by performances for Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton, as well as a 1989 tour of the Soviet Union just before its collapse. Career honors include induction into the Gospel Hall of Fame in 2006 and a two-day 75th birthday celebration by the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in 2024, affirming his status as both church and concert-hall figure.
The obituary briefly notes that Smallwood never married and is survived by two stepbrothers and three foster sisters, hinting at a chosen and extended family structure. It closes with his own words about wanting “songs that last,” suggesting that his catalog—especially music born from suffering—will outlive him in choirs, churches and recordings.
