He was not only my brother but my best friend, my pastor, my musical companion.”Įdwin served briefly as assistant pastor during Love Center’s early stages. “He’s missed tremendously,” Edwin said of his late brother. Edwin, Walter, Carol, and Feddie lived together in a white mansion surrounded by almond trees and corn fields for eight years in Ripon, a rural Central Valley town between Manteca and Modesto, until Walter’s death. Walter often performed as a member of the Edwin Hawkins Singers, and Edwin played keyboards for the Love Center Choir and toured with Walter Hawkins and the Family, a group that included their sisters Carol, Feddie, and Lynette. He created a lot of problems.”Įdwin and Walter were practically inseparable throughout their lives. He’s looking for those who are not perfect so He can create them the way he wants.’ It’s not up to men to judge, which I think Jamie did. I heard a preacher say the other day, ‘God’s not looking for perfection because He’s already perfect. “It wasn’t as open to receiving everybody. “Jamie’s theology was not in agreement with what Walter’s calling was to this ministry,” Edwin said while sitting in a car in the Love Center parking lot waiting for someone to unlock the doors for a Thursday evening rehearsal. Jamie quit after less than a year to launch his own church and, according to Edwin, took half of the church’s 1,000 members with him. Dissention divided the congregation early on when Jamie, a keyboardist who had once served as musical director for such stars as MC Hammer, Boyz II Men, and Lauryn Hill, questioned two assistant ministers at Love Center, which had welcomed gays and lesbians since its inception, about their sexual orientations. The front of the two-story complex occupies an entire city block between 104th Avenue and what is now officially known as Walter Hawkins Way.Įdwin had never given much thought to preaching himself until Walter’s death four years ago from pancreatic cancer, which was followed by the brief and controversial tenure of Walter’s son Jamie Hawkins as Love Center’s pastor. Four years later, Hawkins helped his younger brother Walter - who had sung in the choir on “Oh Happy Day” and would become a major gospel music figure with his Love Center Choir’s gospel-chart-topping 1975 album Love Alive - establish his own church, Love Center Ministries, at first in the living room of his parents’ Oakland hills home, then in a storefront near Castlemont High School, and for the past 25 years in a former Oldsmobile dealership on International Boulevard not far from the family’s old residence. Cleveland, at whose Ephesians Church of God in Christ on Alcatraz Avenue he recorded a hip, Latin-tinged choir arrangement of the 18th-century hymn “Oh Happy Day” that revolutionized African-American gospel music, became a pop hit, and made Hawkins an international star in 1969. He played and sang while others did the preaching. ![]() As a teenager he began earning money playing piano for churches in West Oakland and South Berkeley. Edwin Hawkins has been praising Jesus Christ in song ever since he was a kid growing up in a large East Oakland family.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |