Harlem’s Maestro of Gospel Music
IT is no idle boast for Edgar Kendricks: The man can sit at any piano or organ in Harlem and summon a legion of church ladies in big hats to fill the pews and serve as his choir.
Take last Saturday night, when more than 100 of his followers crowded into the narrow, windowless Glendale Baptist Church, which is squeezed between apartment buildings on West 128th Street.
As usual, Mr. Kendricks was wringing soul-drenched sounds from a tired baby grand, and belting out spirited versions of hymns, spirituals and gospel standards. Dressed in a long, ornate robe and a black, jeweled turban, he praised Jesus with a bluesy growl and gazed ecstatically at the water-stained ceiling tiles as if they were the portals to heaven.
The performance was advertised by fliers posted around Harlem — “Don’t miss Edgar’s birthday celebration” — and included photos of “The Legendary Edgar Kendricks,” stylishly dressed, eyes cast upward.
At moments Saturday night, he would contort and shake with the spirit. Every few songs, he would duck into the clergy office and emerge in a different flamboyant robe. Women stood and clapped and waved hands overhead. They sang spirited responses and shouted their amens and corroborating testimony. Mr. Kendricks paraded up and down the aisles, shaking bells and hugging people.
“I’m too close,” he screamed. “I can almost see my God’s face.”
The next morning this gospel virtuoso took his usual car service the few short blocks from his 131st Street apartment building to Metropolitan Baptist Church, a large limestone-block building at the corner of Lenox Avenue and 128th Street where Mr. Kendricks holds the lofty title “minister of music.”
Mr. Kendricks, who never married and has no children, is the unofficial mayor of his church-laden neighborhood, which is Gospel Central on Sunday mornings. Tourists often outnumber congregants in local churches, even at Metropolitan Baptist.
On Sundays, Mr. Kendricks sweeps in at the last minute for noon services. He is greeted and fussed over by the women, in white uniforms, who serve as ushers, and then makes his way past his (long since assembled) band to the organ, just in time to lead the assembled through opening hymns. “I don’t think there’s a church in Harlem that I haven’t been in,” said Mr. Kendricks, who turned 69 last Sunday. “This has been my life for 40 years.”
Along with his status as a local gospel star, Mr. Kendricks is one of Harlem’s flashiest dressers, carving out a church-elder-dipped-in-funk look. He favors long-cut suits in bold-colors, often topped with fine-filigreed robes and some sort of tall hat. To accompany him in the clothing stores on 125th Street is to get a seminar in high Harlem street style.
During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Mr. Kendricks led a house band at the Apollo Theater, where he performed with the likes of Marvin Gaye, O. C. Smith and Jerry Butler. He headed an ensemble called Listen My Brother, a gospel-infused group known mostly for its appearances on “Sesame Street.” The group included a teenage Luther Vandross.
“Luther was chubby at the time, but he could certainly sing,” Mr. Kendricks recalled. “The managers made us hide him in the back row because of his weight.”
Mr. Kendricks took front and center in the band. He favored bright yellow slacks, a leather fringed vest, a big Afro and a beaded headband. He wrote and arranged the band’s repertory of gospel-infused children’s songs, including enduring educational staples like “Count to 20” and “Song of the Alphabets.”
This came naturally to Mr. Kendricks, who would write songs to amuse and educate his younger sisters while growing up on a farm in Alabama, the seventh of nine children. He and his siblings formed the Kendricks Gospel Singers and moved to Newark. Mr. Kendricks was soon invited to sing in Harlem churches and was hired at the Apollo. After some flashes of opportunity, he settled into church work in his 30s to make ends meet. “I guess I was overly suspicious a few times when someone would offer me a contract, and maybe that hurt my chances,” he said. “Now I realize that the real money comes from taking a percentage of the profits. But back then, it seemed like such a small percentage.”
It certainly did not diminish his spirit at the Glendale Baptist event, which he wound down with one of his staples, a rollicking version of “Let the Church Roll On,” as the women shouted in approval, “Sing it, Father.”