Edwin Hawkins stood at the forefront of reshaping modern gospel music, earning lasting recognition for the 1969 landmark recording “Oh Happy Day,” which ranked among the most successful gospel releases ever and also crossed over as a significant pop radio success. Born in Oakland, California, in 1943, he joined his church youth choir as a very young child and began playing piano at age five; by seven he had taken on regular piano duties for the family gospel ensemble, which issued its first recordings in 1957. Ten years later, he joined Betty Watson to establish the Northern California State Youth Choir, recruiting top vocalists from across the Bay Area to form a fifty-voice group that entered the studio for the 1968 album Let Us Go into the House of the Lord, whose contemporary production carried clear R&B leanings and signaled a fresh direction for gospel records.
One track from that album, “Oh Happy Day,” unexpectedly gained traction on underground FM stations in San Francisco, then moved to mainstream R&B and pop outlets nationwide, climbing into the U.S. Top Five during spring 1969, moving seven million copies, and capturing a Grammy. The ensemble was subsequently renamed the Edwin Hawkins Singers, yet the lead vocal on “Oh Happy Day” came from Dorothy Combs Morrison, who soon departed for a solo career. Her departure sharply curtailed the group’s commercial momentum, though the Singers did reappear on the pop charts in 1970 by backing Melanie on her single “Lay Down (Candle in the Wind).”
Critical regard for Hawkins persisted, and in 1972 the Singers earned a second Grammy with Every Man Wants to Be Free. They continued releasing material at a steady pace through the rest of the decade, collecting a third Grammy in 1980 for Wonderful and a fourth three years later for If You Love Me. In 1982 Hawkins launched the Edwin Hawkins Music and Arts Seminar, a yearly weeklong gathering that presented workshops on every aspect of the gospel field and closed each edition with a concert by the assembled mass choir. Although his studio output diminished in later years, he maintained an active touring schedule that included 1995 performances alongside the Swedish choir Svart Pa Vitt. The seminar itself expanded, drawing participants from the U.S., Europe, and Japan for its 2002 edition. Hawkins also issued new recordings during the 2000s, among them All the Angels in 2004 and Have Mercy in 2008. He passed away in January 2018 at age 74.
