Rance Allen Group - Biography
Rance Allen was the most visible gospel crossover artist of the 1970s, having taken his joyous, spine-chilling music from the R&B charts to concert halls alongside the biggest names in rock and R&B. Together with his brothers Tom and Steve—who collectively comprise The Rance Allen Group—they are the first black gospel group to fuse rock, soul and jazz into the music. Allen’s influence is vast. Said author Barney Hoskyns about his soaring falsetto, it “seems almost to dance and pirouette within itself, soaring over the instrumentation like a bird,” only to plunge into a deep, growling bass—and Allen delivers tour de force scats along his route. Anita Baker once observed, he makes his amazing register leaps “at the drop of a hat.”
Allen’s performances are legendary, as his facial expressions change almost as often as his notes. He’ll flash his full set of teeth, grinning from ear to ear, then suddenly become somber while professing his faith in God. His head bobs back and forth as if his neck were made of rubber while he pumps the piano buoyantly. And—if the Spirit moves him—he might rise from the stool and bounce up and down pogo-like to bassist Steve and drummer Tom’s throbbing beats.
Besides having introduced soul and rock elements into the gospel music canon, Allen devised daring new ways to extend the possibilities of the human voice—and it was a pioneering feat that would influence a subsequent generation of singers. The “message” gospel music that he performed shot up the chart ranks, especially with “I Got to Be Myself” in 1973 and “Ain’t No Need of Crying” in 1975, issued respectively on the Stax subsidiary labels Gospel Truth and Truth. These songs and others were purposely written to avoid direct reference to the central object of Allen’s passion. The words “God” and “Jesus” were replaced by the nonspecific pronouns “He,” “Him,” and “You”—a practice followed during the next decade by The Winans and their younger siblings BeBe and CeCe. While such deliberate obfuscation opened doors at many radio stations that ordinarily didn’t program gospel music, it also led to strong criticism from some of the more traditionally-minded members of gospel’s constituency.
Allen had his reasons. “I’m trying to attract someone’s ear without scaring them to death or sounding fanatical, but what I’m actually trying to do is win them over to Christ,” he explained in 1980. “If you walk into a radio station and hand them a gospel album and say, ‘Play this for me,’ chances are it won’t get played. I try to do like the Bible says, ‘In order to win souls, you’ve got to be wise.’ The first thing you’ve got to do is get your message played in order to get it across to the people. I make my songs so blatantly clear that, as the Bible says, ‘only a fool would not make an error.’ If he listens and pays attention to what’s being said.”
One of the dozen children of Thomas and Emma Pearl Allen, Rance Lee Allen was born November 19, 1948, in Monroe, Michigan. He began performing as “Little Rance Allen, the Boy Preacher” at the age of five. Often appearing throughout Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania until he was 14, Allen’s grandparents handled all his booking engagements and drove him from place to place. He began playing piano when he was seven years old and picked up the guitar two years later. His mother was also a guitarist—she was influenced by Sister Rosetta Tharpe, whose song “Up Above My Head” Allen would include on his 1971 debut album. Allen also credits James Cleveland as his primary influence—his song “That Will Be Good Enough for Me” would become a staple of Allen’s repertoire and was featured on his 1972 Gospel Truth album, Truth Is Where It’s At—but he also cites Ray Charles and Chuck Berry. When playing guitar, he often employs many of Berry’s show-stopping rock ‘n’ roll theatrics.
Allen stopped touring when he was in his mid-teens after coming to the conclusion that “preaching was all work and almost no play.” Just three years later however, at 17 years old, he resumed performing regularly and started working toward becoming a minister. By 1978, Allen was ordained as an elder in the Church of God in Christ. He later became a bishop in the denomination and has for many years served as pastor of New Bethel Church of God in Christ in Toledo, Ohio.
Rance and his brothers—both of whom supply vocal harmonies—made their debut recording for the tiny Reflect label in 1969. It was the single “Let’s Get Together and Love,” and it was backed with “First Day in Heaven.” Two years later, the trio won a gospel talent contest in Detroit. One of the judges was veteran record promoter Dave Clark, who was so impressed with the brothers that he and group manager Toby Jackson booked a studio for the siblings to record. They needed less than two hours to cut an entire album. Stax bought the master and issued it under the title Rance Allen Group on the Gospel Truth label in 1972.
The album contained the track “Just My Imagination (Just My Salvation),” a reworking of the Barrett Strong/Norman Whitfield-penned 1971 Temptations hit “Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me).” The group’s second Gospel Truth album, 1973’s Truth Is Where It’s At, led off with a gospel version of “There’s Gonna Be a Showdown,” the Archie Bell & The Drells hit written by Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff. Such experimentation had been encouraged by Allen’s pastor and grandfather.
“For a while there,” the singer has stated, “I was taking everything I heard and converting it so I could play it in church.’
The group performed the song “Lying on the Truth” in front of some 12,000 people at the Seventh Annual Watts Summer Festival, held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on August 20, 1972. The performance was included on the Stax album Wattstax 2 and in the 1973 motion picture Wattstax.
The Rance Allen Group began showing up on Billboard’s R&B chart, first in 1973 with “I Got to Be Myself,” which hit #31, and then in 1975 with “Ain’t No Need of Crying,” written and co-produced by David Porter and issued on the Truth label. Subsequent R&B chart singles were the #100 “Truth Is Marching On” (1977 Capitol), the #24 “I Belong to You” (1979, Stax), the #41 “Smile” (1979 Stax), and the #32 “Miracle Worker” (1991 Bellmark).
After the demise of the original Stax company, Allen recorded one album for Capitol, Say My Friend. It was issued in 1977 under Rance’s name only and produced by brothers Larry and Alphonso "Fonce" Mizell. Stax was purchased by Fantasy Records in Berkeley, California, in 1977 and reactivated as a label. The group rejoined Stax the following year and made three new albums: Straight from the Heart (1978), Smile (1979)—both with producer Henry Cosby—and I Feel Like Going On (1980). The latter was produced by Allen and Ronnie McNair, and both Cosby and McNair had previously been associated with Motown.
The group made no recordings between 1981 and 1983, when it signed with the powerful Christian record and book company Word, Inc., of Waco, Texas. The Allen brothers had three albums released on the firm’s Myrrh label, of which 1985’s I Give Myself to You was the most successful. Rance toured with several gospel musical theater productions in the late 1980s.
Al Bell, the same executive who’d signed the group to Stax in 1971 launched his own label 20 years later. It was called Bellmark, and they signed the Allen’s. Phenomenon, issued in 1991 and featuring the hit “Miracle Worker,” reached #33 on Billboard’s R&B album chart and also became their first album to top the magazine’s gospel chart. Curiously, it took Bellmark four years to release a follow-up album, You Make Me Wanna Dance (1995), which climbed to #7 on the gospel chart.
After another lengthy break from recording, the Rance Allen Group landed with Tryscot Records in 2002, a label based out Indianapolis, Indiana. The first CD for the label, All the Way (2002), contained the gospel radio hit “Do Your Will.” The Live Experience (2004) featured live renditions of such Allen favorites as “That Will Be Good Enough for Me,” “Ain’t No Need of Crying,” “I Belong to You,” “Miracle Worker,” and “Do Your Will,” as well as guest appearances by Kirk Franklin, Fred Hammond, and LaShun Pace. A third Tryscot CD, Closest Friend, was released in 2007.
Allen also performs the song “I Stand on the Banks of Jordan” on the all-star CD Tribute to Bishop G.E. Patterson (2009 World Wide Gospel).
The Rance Allen Group has been nominated for three Grammy Awards, four Stellar Awards, and one Soul Train Music Award. The trio was inducted into the International Gospel Music Hall of Fame and Museum in 1998.
The group’s recordings from the 1970s for the Gospel Truth, Truth, and Stax labels have been anthologized on two CDs: the 12-song The Best of The Rance Allen Group (1991, Stax) and the 16-song Stax Profiles (2006 Stax). There is an overlap of only five songs.