GRAMMY® AWARD NOMINEE GOSPEL SINGER BISHOP Rance Allen of the Rance Allen Group Dies”>RANCE ALLEN DATES AT 71
Bishop Rance Allen of the Grammy-winning soul and gospel trio The Rance Allen Groupdied at the age of 71. “While recovering from a medical procedure at Heartland ProMedica [in Sylvania, OH]Bishop Rance Allen passed away around 3 a.m. this morning,” Allen’s wife of 49 years, Ellen Allen, and his manager, Toby Jackson, said in a joint statement.
“I didn’t expect to hear this news this morning,” said Tyscot Files President Bryant Scott, who was almost speechless upon hearing of the singer’s death, said: “It’s a great loss for us personally but also for the church community as a whole.”
The Rance Allen Group’s brand of progressive gospel and Allen’s signature growls and snarls inspired a generation of gospel artists from Kirk Franklin and Fred Hammond to John P. Kee and Bryan Andrew Wilson. In the 1970s, they pioneered a fusion of R&B rhythms with spiritually charged message music on hits like “Ain’t No Need of Crying,” “I Belong to You” and their cover of The Temptation’s “Just My Imagination” as “Just My Rise.” The retro-soul vibe carried over to the group’s hits of the past two decades like “You That I Trust,” “Miracle Worker” and “Something About the Name Jesus,” which has racked up more than 175 million streams. It’s a brand that has earned them fans beyond the gospel world, like American Idol’s Randy Jackson and pop rockers Huey Lewis & The News. In a 2019 Rolling Stone interview, Lewis cited “Ain’t No Need of Crying” as one of his top 5 favorite soul songs of all time alongside tracks by Ray Charles and others.
Rance Allen was born on November 19, 1948 in Monroe, MI. One of twelve children, he began singing and preaching as Little Rance Allen at age five.
“We grew up in a family where you went to church every night,” he once said. “To keep us interested, my grandmother Emma Pearl went to a pawn shop and brought in instruments, drums, guitars and amplifiers.
Using records by the Rev. James Cleveland and Ray Charles as his guides, he taught himself to play piano before taking up guitar with Chuck Berry as an influence. His grandparents were his agents, but he once told writer Lee Hildebrand, “I didn’t have a life like most kids. I wasn’t allowed to play baseball with the guys and do the things a kid does.
Around 1967, Rance, himself on guitar, formed the Rance Allen Singers with his older brother Tom on drums and younger brother Steve on bass. They recorded their first song, “Let’s Get Together and Love”—a psychedelic number with Allen’s stratospheric high notes and a direct message about Jesus Christ sacrificing his life on the cross so that humanity could love one another—for the local Reflect label. Then, in 1971, they won a $500 prize at a Detroit talent show where legendary Stax Records promoter Dave Clark was in the audience. Clark liked what he heard and took the rebranded Rance Allen Group into the studio and recorded an album’s worth of material that Stax Records purchased.
Stax chairman Al Bell loved the trio’s music so much that he created the subsidiary The Gospel Truth specifically to promote it. Their first single was “Just My Salvation,” a 1971 gospel cover of The Temptations’ “Just My Imagination.” Soon they were appearing on bills with The Dramatics and Barry White and bringing their R&B-infused gospel to unchurched audiences. Their following was built on hits such as “I Gotta Be Myself,” “I Don’t Have to Cry” and “That’ll Be Enough for Me.”
