Rance Allen

Singer/Keyboardist/Guitarist (Born: November 20, 1948 in Monroe, MI. Died: October 31, 2020 in Sylvania, OH; Age: 71) Bishop Rance Allen fronted the first modern gospel group to take secular songs and secular performance practices and recast them with religious lyrics. In doing so, the Rance Allen Group was able to cross over to the soul charts and proved to be influential in what was referred to as the contemporary Christian music movement, epitomized by crossover artists such as the Winans and Andrae Crouch. Raised in the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), Allen started playing piano at the age of seven. A few years later Allen took up guitar. At the time, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Reverend Utah Smith were largely responsible for making the electric guitar the instrument of choice in the COGIC church. Allen’s mother, Emma Pearl Allen, partially inspired by Rosetta Tharpe, also played the electric guitar and passed much of Tharpe’s incendiary, church-wrecking style onto her son. In the late 1960s, Allen began playing church programs in and around Detroit fronting the Rance Allen Group, which included his brothers Tom and Steve on drums and bass guitar. A third brother, Esau, would play percussion with the group at various times in the 1970s. Around 1971 they entered a Detroit radio contest, where they won first prize singing Tharpe’s ‘‘Up Above My Head.’’ One of the judges was legendary black promotion man Dave Clark. Impressed by what he heard, Clark took Allen to the Memphis based soul label Stax Records, whose vice president, Al Bell, proceeded to sign Allen and set up a gospel subsidiary, Gospel Truth, to release recordings by the Rance Allen Group. Eventually the group placed five singles on the Billboard rhythm and blues charts. In 2004, the group was nominated for a Grammy for their The Live Experience (US 2004) (opens in a new tab) album, which featured guest appearances by contemporary gospel stars Fred Hammond, LaShun Pace, and Kirk Franklin.