Is russ taff still alive

I was not at all prepared for the calls I got, back to back, late Sunday afternoon telling me that Sandra Crouch had died. I didn’t know her, but the people who called knew that I loved her and they wanted me to know before the news went all around the world. A world without Sandra (or Andraé) Crouch in it is hard to fathom. Her music has been present in my life since I was born. Her solo albums in the eighties and nineties were companions for me in incredibly hard and lonely times.

With her twin brother, Andraé, she innovated the contemporary gospel sound in his early group The COGICS, and simultaneously began a career as a session musician, playing percussion on everything from the Jackson 5’s “I Want You Back” and “ABC” to Janis Joplin’s posthumous Pearl album.

When Andraé launched his group, The Disciples, in 1965, she was once again there providing vocal and instrumental support as the group became a driver in the development of contemporary gospel and (what would later become known as) contemporary Christian music. They broke color lines in t

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