Richard Smallwood: A Remembrance

By Robert M. Marovich

When I heard the news that Richard Smallwood passed away today, it was as if church bells stopped tolling. Hymnbooks closed. Choirs paused. Organs and pianos fell silent.

We may never see the likes of a Richard Smallwood in gospel music again. Like the great Roberta Martin, whom he admired, Smallwood was an innovative songwriter and director who blended skillfully the majesty of classical choral music with the sacrality of the Black church writ large. His songs and arrangements possess an intensity that crosses denominational boundaries. Whether Pentecostal, Baptist, AME, or CME, congregants know the catalog of Richard Smallwood. It has its own brilliance, its own timbre. You recognize it when you hear it. His songs are in hymnbooks alongside other great hymnists and songwriters. And when a choir sings “Total Praise,” one feels compelled to stand in reverence, just as audiences stand for Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus.”

Smallwood’s music has not only crossed denominations, it has crossed oceans. In the late 1990s, I was at a Sunday service at a nondenominational church in Durban, South Africa. When the choir rose to sing, I expected a hymn with a distinctly African flair. I was surprised to hear the small group lift “Total Praise” as if they’d sung it their whole life.

Finally, the oeuvre of Richard Smallwood has crossed racial boundaries. Black and white choirs, groups, and congregations alike have sung “Center of My Joy.” Anyone who has seen the Gaither Homecoming video called Gospel Pioneer Reunion that brought together African American gospel artists for a communal sing know that Smallwood was right at home in the midst. His music even made the silver screen; Whitney Houston and the Georgia Mass Choir sang his arrangement of “I Love the Lord,” recorded originally in the late 1970s by the Union Temple Young Adult Choir, for the 1996 holiday film The Preacher’s Wife.

“I Love the Lord,” “Total Praise,” Center of My Joy,” and a Christmas song Smallwood wrote for Edwin Hawkins called “Follow the Star” have what I call the Smallwood Ending—a coda of voices rising in such breathtaking majesty that I suspect it is what the soul hears as it ascends into heaven.

And that is what Richard Smallwood is doing now—ascending the steps to heaven, where he’ll be greeted by a choir of angels, including his beloved mother, singing “Total Praise.” The rest of the heavenly onlookers will be standing–in reverence, of course.