Ronnie Wilson, a founding member of the popular funk group The Gap Band, has died at the age of 73. Wilson passed away at his home in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on Tuesday morning, his wife, Linda Boulware-Wilson, confirmed in a Facebook post shared later that day. She told TMZ that her husband suffered a stroke the week before, which left him in a semi-comatose state that he never recovered from. Boulware-Wilson said that her husband had suffered from several strokes in recent years.
According to Boulware-Wilson, who said she held her husband’s hand in his final moments, the music legend “was called home this morning, at 10:01 a.m.” Wilson’s wife asked that her followers “continue to pray for The Wilson, Boulware, and Collins family.” She remembered her husband as “a genius with creating, producing, and playing the flugelhorn, Trumpet, keyboards, and singing music, from childhood to his early seventies,” adding that “he will be truly missed!!!”
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Wilson was one of the three brothers who co-founded The Gap. Originally named The Greenwood Archer Pine Street Band — after three streets in a Black area of their hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, which was targeted by a white mob in the 1921 Tulsa race massacre — the band was formed in the late 1960s by Wilson and his brothers Charlie and Robert, who died in 2010 of a heart attack at age 53. The group later shortened its name to The G.A.P. Band and finally The Gap Band.
They released their first album, Magicians Holiday, in 1974, though they didn’t gain much commercial traction until later in the decade and the early ’80s. Their 1979 album The Gap Band helped the group reach No. 10 on Billboard’s Top Soul Albums chart, according to the Daily Mail. Their third album, The Gap Band II, followed later that year reached No. 3 on Billboard’s Top R&B Albums chart and 42 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Their biggest album, however, came with 1980’s The Gap Band III. The album featured the hit songs “Yearning For Your Love” and “Burn Rubber on Me (Why You Wanna Hurt Me).” It was followed in ’82 by Gap Band IV, which included hits like “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” and “Outstanding,” which has been sampled by more than 150 artists. The band released several more albums throughout the ’80s and ’90s before Charlie kicked off a solo career.
In addition to being a co-founding member of The Gap, Wilson produced records for multiple artists, including Goodie’s 1982 album Call Me Goodie, Pitchfork reports. He was also active in music ministry at a San Antonio church.
