A TRIBUTE TO REVEREND TIMOTHY WRIGHT

I met Timothy Wright long before I could even remember knowing him.  He was a young budding musician and one of the organists at Washington Temple Church of God In Christ in Brooklyn, New York at the time.  My dad was a new young pastor and our church was walking distance from Washington Temple.  Timothy Wright encouraged my father, who was “dibbling” at playing the organ, to put me into the first class of the Washington Temple daycare.  Needless to say, I was in their first year of the daycare program, and my dad spent many hours talking to “Tim” each day when my father picked me up.  Dad tells me that “Tim” used to be at the church almost every day-as if he was paid to be there-honing his gift and playing that organ.  Back in those days, Upper Room Baptist and Washington Temple had the “baddest” (best) choirs in Brooklyn (aside from Institutional Church of God in Christ).  If I remember correctly, both church choirs did a couple of concerts on Sunday nights at our church.

This was long before Timothy Wright launched out and began a concert choir, community choir and married his wife, Co-Pastor Betty Wright.  Years later, I came to fellowship with them through gospel music industry functions and even visited his home a few times to pick up and drop off masters for recordings.  Of course, he didn’t remember me at all, but he remembered my dad.  By then (the late nineties), he was well-known as the “Godfather” of gospel music.  I would later interface with Pastor Wright and Co-Pastor Betty Wright several times. 

The best way to describe Pastor Wright would be to share the testimony of a woman I met through him-Samantha Holmes Elliott.  When I met her years ago at a conference, she told me how much she adored Pastor Wright.  She had a solo gospel music project, and told me how much he supported her music ministry and career.  Just about everyone who I would come across after years in NYC gospel music radio would speak well of Timothy Wright in the same light.  He was truly a godfather.  Not the Mafioso image of a godfather.  But a father who would make sure that singers, psalmists, minstrels, and the like were advanced as much as he could push them, without any favors or “strings attached”.  Pastor Wright was known to call Samantha Holmes Elliott out of an audience, whether she was on the program or not, and hand her the mike and let her minister.  When he had a door, if she was in the building, chances were, she had an opportunity. 

I can rattle off a number of young men and groups that Elder Wright would put up during his recordings and concerts just to give them “exposure”.  Anyone can observe his sons and their giftings and skills and know that the apples didn’t fall too far from the tree, and in fact, did as good trees do:  dropped fruit that is greater.  “Tim” had the ability to pick up the singers while frying chicken in the church basement-literally-and calling them to sing since the late seventies/early eighties and put ten leads on one song before it was popular. 

All of my life, Reverend Timothy Wright has put out great gospel music.  When I joined the staff of WGBB 1240 AM radio’s Gospel All Night Thru the Morning in 2000, Timothy Wright and a number of New York artists who had been writing, singing, playing and recording before they ever got a play on the radio, charted Billboard, performed at industry showcases, ministered at conferences, or won any music awards, were always on rotation.  Elder Wright was loyal to his passion of ministry and truly a dynamo in the gospel music arena.  He was a servant loved by many and I will never forget the image of the young man behind the organ with a huge choir in a small Brooklyn church on Kent Avenue in Brooklyn, New York.  Reverend Wright may have had an inkling back then of where God would take him in helping to form the traditional choir sound, New York style.  I’m glad he lived to see it come to pass. The greatest lesson in watching his life is Pastor Wright valued and worked to perfect the gift that God gave him.  Since he practiced every day in the early seventies as a faithful steward, you and I can be encouraged to know over eight hundred songs later, that Jesus Will, Yes I’m A Believer, Testify, Been There Done That, Who’s On the Lord’s Side, Worthy Of The Praise, I Hear Music, Come Thou Almighty King, Moving The Spirit, Trouble Don’t Last Always and so much more.

Just reflecting on a life well-lived,

Prophetess KIM