Rushing across a church altar, fist shaking, hammering home notes, index finger pointed toward the sky, it was as if Lou Della Evans Reid was physically dragging the spirit of the Lord from her choir.
Ms. Evans Reid, longtime choir director at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church on the South Side, was a legend in the gospel community.
She and her brother, the Rev. Clay Evans, who died in 2019, were co-founders of the church.
It opened in 1950 and became a destination for the country’s top gospel singers and other musicians.
Her Sunday choir combined the congregation’s youth and adult groups and totaled more than 200 singers.
“It was a really big, rich, robust harmonic style of gospel singing,” said gospel music broadcaster Bob Marovich.
“She was this diminutive person, under five feet tall, in front of this big choir and she’s jumping and shaking her fist … other musicians, if they wanted musical nourishment, they would go there, it was that powerful,” Marovich said.
“To watch her perform was an event itself, she was a very physical choir director, and then she’d turn around and direct the audience, too,” Marovich said.
Albums released by the choir were bestsellers and included Ms. Evans Reid’s brother, an accomplished gospel singer himself.
Chicago is considered to be the birthplace of modern gospel, and Ms. Evans Reid was one of the few surviving members of the pioneering generation of gospel greats that solidified the city’s place in the genre.
She was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer this spring and had been receiving hospice care at her South Side home.
Ms. Evans Reid died Saturday. She was 94.
An early 95th birthday celebration in May at the Bridgeport Arts Center was attended by hundreds, including Mayor Brandon Johnson.
After the event, Fox 32 ran a retrospective on her life and asked Ms. Evans Reid what she wanted the world to remember about her. She responded, “I gave it all I had. I want to lift up God, build up God. I ain’t trying to build my name up but build God’s name up. If you take care of God, he’ll take care of you.”
She was also a civil rights leader alongside her brother.
The siblings welcomed Martin Luther King, Jr. to their church when he visited Chicago in the ’60s.
Their alliance with King irked city leaders and resulted in many delays in the permitting process to build a new church, said Marovich. It ultimately took seven years to complete the project at 4543 S. Princeton Ave.
The church gained national prominence by broadcasting services on radio and television. The Rev. Jesse Jackson was ordained there.
Ms. Evans Reid also had a long career as a surgical nurse and worked at several Chicago hospitals.
In addition to directing the choir at Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, she worked with several other Chicago choirs, and was well known for serving as music coordinator of Gospel Music According to Chicago.
She always strove to ensure the legacy of the traditional gospel sound she and the early generation of gospel fans loved.
“A highlight of her catalog was when she directed her choir in singing ‘It Is Well With My Soul’ … it never fails to bring tears to people’s eye,” Marovich said.
Ms. Evans Reid was born July 7, 1930, in Brownsville, Tennessee, to Henry Clay and Estanauly Evans, according to The HistoryMakers, a non-profit that seeks to preserve the history of significant African Americans.
She grew up in a large family that loved to sing.
“She was known as Mama Lou, and she had this toughness about her, you knew Mama Lou loved you, but she was going to make sure that her choir sounded the best it could, and she’d get the best out of you,” Marovich said.
A collection of church programs, newsletters, audiovisual materials, photographs and other memorabilia pertaining to Ms. Evans Reid is archived with the Chicago Public Library.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by PostX News and is published from a syndicated feed.)
