Marion Williams; Leading Gospel Singer

Gospel singer Marion Williams, whose love and mastery of spiritual music influenced greats from Aretha Franklin to Little Richard, has died in Philadelphia at age 66.

Williams died Saturday of vascular disease at Albert Einstein Medical Institute. Although she suffered from diabetes and severe kidney problems in recent years, Williams continued to sing to audiences throughout the world.

Her soaring voice radiated the richness and power of gospel music. She won many accolades. In December, Williams was the first gospel singer ever honored by the Kennedy Center in Washington. There, she sang for President Clinton and the nation.

“For almost a half-century now,” Clinton said, “no voice has soared like that of Miss Marion Williams.”

Williams also was the first singer to win a “genius” grant from the MacArthur Foundation, a total of $374,000 in cash. The foundation hailed Williams as “one of the greatest and most versatile singers of her generation, exerting a profound influence not only in gospel, but also in the development of rock ‘n’ roll and soul music.”

When news of the honor arrived a year ago, she was working in the soup kitchen of her Philadelphia church.

Rolling Stone magazine had the highest praise for Williams, considering her not only the greatest of all gospel singers, but “possibly the best singer ever.”

She appeared on stage with Duke Ellington and Dizzy Gillespie. And her powerful voice and extraordinary range influenced an array of singers. Little Richard once credited his high-pitched trills and falsetto whoops to hearing Williams when he was young.

Born Aug. 29, 1927, to humble beginnings in Miami, Williams was the youngest of 11 children. Only three of her siblings survived past their first year.

By age 3, Williams had started singing “the Lord’s music,” along with her mother, a soloist in the church choir. “My mother had a voice on her,” Williams said in an interview. “Her number was ‘Oh, Jesus, Let Me Ride,’ and she used to sing it at church every Sunday. People, white people and black people, used to come from all around Miami Beach to hear my mama sing.”

But it was during a visit to her sister’s in Philadelphia at age 17 that Williams won notice. After singing a gospel song at a local church, Williams received such an ovation that she was invited to join the Ward Singers, a premier gospel group at the time. With them, she toured the United States and Europe.

“Marion came out of the Pentecostal culture, and she brought a fire to the Ward Singers. When she sang, she would simply turn the church out,” said Bernice Johnson Reagon, a curator at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution and author of a book on gospel history. “She is simply the best we had during the classical gospel era of the ‘40s and ‘50s.”

By 1959, she had formed her own gospel group, the Stars of Faith, which toured widely. Williams struck out on her own in 1965.

Throughout her career, she rejected offers to sing “secular music” ranging from blues to jazz. “I was offered $100,000 to make one blues record, and I turned it down,” she said. “I sing for the Lord, and that’s enough for me.” Williams described herself as a woman “practically born in a church” and said: “I ain’t no rock ‘n’ roller. I’m a holy roller.”

She recorded 10 solo albums, including her latest, “I Can’t Keep It to Myself.” Her music is heard in such movies as “Fried Green Tomatoes” and “Mississippi Masala.” And she appeared on Bill Moyers’ PBS documentary “Amazing Grace.”

“She knew how to move you from one emotion to another without jilting you and when you least expected it, she would drop a vocal bomb on you,” said the Rev. Clarence Blair, operations manager for a 24-hour religious radio station in Philadelphia.

“What she did was real, it was not a game,” Blair said. “Her singing was an extension of her religious commitment.”