Where is edwin hawkins

He died in January at the age of AllMusic relies heavily on JavaScript. Please enable JavaScript in your browser to use the site fully. Blues Classical Country.

Electronic Folk International. Jazz Latin New Age. Aggressive Bittersweet Druggy. Energetic Happy Hypnotic. Romantic Sad Sentimental. Sexy Trippy All Moods. In , Edwin Reuben Hawkins, who was born on August 19, , in Oakland, California and had been playing the piano at the age of five and accompanying the Hawkins family gospel group since he was seven, joined his church pianist and soprano, Betty Watson of the Ephesian Church of God in Christ in Berkeley, California, to consider the possibility of creating a powerful chorale ensemble to promote gospel music.

After weeks of discussions and research, the two musicians invited the best choirs in the San Francisco Bay Area to meet with them. Ultimately the Northern California State Youth Choir, a community gospel choir formed in May and which included 47 young men and women in their late teens and early twenties, was recruited to this project.

The album which was recorded at Ephesian Church of God in Christ, included eight songs. In less than a year , copies of the single had sold, sparked in part by the choir performing on the popular dance show, American Bandstand, giving it national exposure.

The choir had been formed by Hawkins and Betty Watson while Hawkins was a university student at Berkeley, taking a course in interior design. The whole album was recorded on a simple two-track machine because we could afford no more. The song being long out of copyright, Hawkins was able to claim a songwriting credit. It was decided to release it as a single, on the newly created Pavilion label. So it proved. Fans of Motown or soul singers such as Sam Cooke or Aretha Franklin could identify with the sound immediately, but instead of pop lyrics, Oh Happy Day was an unabashed celebration of religious faith.

In it won a Grammy award for best soul gospel performance.