Larry Bland performing with The Volunteer Choir (Image courtesy Virginia State University)
Larry Bland was a master of gospel music, leading The Volunteer Choir, based out of Richmond’s Second Baptist Church, for 44 years. The group released three albums and a handful of singles, now considered collectors’ items, and it has a reputation that extends beyond the commonwealth. When Queen Elizabeth II visited Richmond in 2007, it was Larry Bland and The Volunteer Choir who welcomed the British monarch with song. Under Bland’s direction, the choir also appeared with the Richmond Symphony and performed at many summer outdoor events and festivals. In August, Bland announced that he had been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer, and he retired as director of the choir. He went into hospice care, and three months later, on Nov. 13, he died.
“He was that catalyst for us, for young people,” says Almeta Ingram-Miller, a member of The Legendary Ingrammettes, founded by the late gospel legend Maggie Ingram. She says the group’s relationship with Bland was sealed when he recommended them to the committee in charge of establishing the Richmond Folk Festival. “That’s just the kind of person he was,” Ingram-Miller says. “He forged friendships and connections. He was a person of excellence — caring and compassionate.”
Bland was a teenage freshman at Virginia State University when he took over as director of The Volunteer Choir in 1968. (He also founded the Virginia State University Gospel Chorale while attending VSU.) The Volunteer Choir’s name originated when Dr. Odie Brown, then the pastor of Second Baptist Church, asked for volunteers to sing while the church’s music ministry was being reorganized. The group went on to release its self-titled debut album in 1977, featuring six songs written by Bland and several featuring him as a vocalist.
Russell Bennett, a member of Back N Da Day, a local vocal group, met Bland in college, where Bland played piano for an “underground gospel group” that rehearsed in the basement of the girls’ dormitory. He remembers Bland as a perfectionist. “He was disciplined,” Bennett says. “Everything I learned about being professional, putting out the best product possible, I transferred to my group.”
Sheilah Belle, gospel music promoter and editor of the syndicated radio program “The Belle Report Entertainment News Update,” seconds the sentiment. “He was such a meticulous leader who pushed for excellence in all that he did,” she says. “I learned a lot from Larry, and I will truly miss him.”
Members of the Richmond theater community were also familiar with Bland’s work. He received the area’s first Phoebe Award as best actor for his work in the musical “Purlie” at the Haymarket Theatre in 1976. (This was an honor bestowed on a generation of local theater greats by the longtime Richmond theater critic Roy Proctor, who also died in 2020.) Bland was Rev. Purlie to actress Sheila Spurlock-Shaw’s Lutiebelle. Later, in the 1980s, he played the title role in the Haymarket Theatre’s production of “The Wiz,” alongside a child actress named Desirée Roots, who appeared as Dorothy. Roots continues to perform on theater and concert stages around the state.
Bland briefly gave up directing the choir, moving to Northern Virginia in 1984 to work as an executive assistant to an entertainment attorney. Eventually he began to commute back to Richmond to pick up his director’s baton. He returned to Richmond permanently in 2014. Bland gave his final concert performance with The Volunteer Choir on Dec. 30, 2018, as part of the group’s 50th anniversary celebration.
In contrast to the crowds the Bland-led Volunteer Choir would often perform for, coronavirus precautions only allowed a small gathering of family and friends to attend his graveside service on Nov. 20. The 30-minute program was livestreamed, though, garnering nearly 5,000 viewers. Dr. Kirkland R. Walton, senior pastor of the St. Peter Baptist Church in Glen Allen, officiated. Bland and The Volunteer Choir were a fifth-Sunday fixture at Walton’s church for many years. Desirée Roots sang three songs, “I’ll Never Leave You,” “The Storm Is Passing Over” and “Total Praise.”
An inspired performer and uplifting artist who left a positive and lasting impact on those worked with him, Bland was 67 at the time of his death.
