Richard Smallwood, a revered singer and songwriter who scored a dozen Top 10 albums and four No. 1s on the Billboard gospel chart and amassed eight Grammy nominations during his long career, died Tuesday of kidney failure in Sandy Spring, MD. He was 77.
His family announced the news on Instagram, and his publicist Bill Carpenter confirmed the details to the Washington Post.
Born on November 30, 1948, in Washington, D.C., Smallwood released a couple of albums in the 1970s with a local church choir before hitting big with The Richard Smallwood Singers in 1982. The LP hit No. 2 on Billboard’s gospel albums chart and would spent more than a year and a half on that tally. His 1984 follow-up disc, Pslams, continued what would become a string of six consecutive Top 10 gospel albums with the group through 1992. It also earned Smallwood his first Grammy nomination, for Best Soul Gospel Performance by a Duo or Group.
Perhaps his best-known song is “Total Praise,” first recorded with his group Vision on a 1996 live album. It was featured in a 2001 medley by the Beyoncé-led Destiny’s Child, who also released a live version of the full song the following year. Stevie Wonder played “Total Praise” during the 2014 memorial service for Martin Luther King’s son Dexter Scott King.
The song later provided the title for Smalwood’s 2019 autobiography.
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Whitney Houston sang a version of Smallwood’s “I Love the Lord” in Penny Marshall’s 1996 movie The Preacher’s Wife, in which Houston starred with Denzel Washington.
Smallwood’s biggest commercial success came in 2011 with Vision, whose album Promises hit No. 1 on the gospel chart and crossed over to reach No. 63 on the Billboard 200 album tally. Its track “Trust Me” became Smallwood’s lone Top 10 on the gospel singles chart and earned him a final Grammy nom, for Best Gospel Song. He also had back-to-back chart-topping live albums in 2006 and 2015.
Smallwood played piano as a featured artist on Kirk Franklin’s 2000 single “Don’t Cry,” which was a Top 10 gospel hit.
Along the way he won four Dove Awards on 19 nominations from the Gospel Music Association and was inducted into its Hall of Fame in 2006. He was up for Traditional Gospel Recorded Song of the Year at the 2025 Doves as a co-writer of Ricky Dillard’s “When I Think.”
Information on survivors was not immediately available.