Walter Hawkins, a Grammy-winning gospel composer and singer, died on Sunday of pancreatic cancer at the home he shared with brother, Edwin, and three sisters in Ripon, Calif. He was 61.
Walter Lee Hawkins was born in Oakland on May 18, 1949; his father worked as a porter and a longshoreman. He dropped out of high school — he later earned a G.E.D. — and with his brother Edwin played at church events. He attended classes in divinity at the University of California, Berkeley. In 1972, Mr. Hawkins founded the Love Center Church where he served as pastor, and with it he founded the Love Center Choir. Hawkins became an ordained bishop in 1992.
With the choir, with his brother and other siblings, and with his former wife, Tramaine, he recorded more than a dozen albums, including five albums collectively known as the “Love Alive” series.
Mr. Hawkins songs brought a sense of contemporary rhythm to traditional church music. His best-known single songs are “Oh Happy Day “ (credited to the Edward Hawkins Singers), “Changed,” “Goin’ Up Yonder,” “Marvelous” and “Thank You Lord”. In all, Walter Hawkins produced and/or collaborated on 116 hit songs which were listed on the Billboard Gospel Music charts.
Hawkins’s marriage to the former Tramaine Davis ended in divorce, but they remained close and often performed together. He is survived by a son, Walter Jamie and daughter Trystan Hawkins along with two grandchildren.
Pastor Hezekiah Walker, a two-time Grammy-winning gospel singer and radio host who founded a church, the Love Fellowship Tabernacle, that was modeled after Mr. Hawkins’s credits Walter Hawkins as his rle model. “It was the first gospel record where I said to myself, ‘I can do this, I can get with this.’ Churchgoing people who grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, Walter Hawkins was who we looked to for music we enjoyed.”
Bishop Walter Hawkins was one of the most beloved figures in contemporary Gospel Music today. May he rest in peace.
Source: New York Times; Wikipedia
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