Rudolph Atwood (December 16, 1912 – October 16, 1992) was an American Christian music pianist, known primarily for his years as accompanist on the long-running Old Fashioned Revival Hour radio program led by Charles E. Fuller from 1937 to 1968 on the Mutual Broadcasting System and later on the ABC Radio Network. After Fuller's death in 1968, Atwood continued to play on the successor program, The Joyful Sound. He made many recordings accompanying the program's quartet and choir and made appearances playing the piano at various churches and concerts until his death in 1992. He was known as "the most imitated pianist in gospel music", for his improvisations and arrangements of traditional hymns.
Early years
Atwood was born in 1912 in Marion, Illinois, to a Baptist family. When he was 10 years old, he began taking piano lessons, which he enjoyed greatly. Atwood wrote in his autobiography, The Rudy Atwood Story, that he needed no encouragement from his parents to practice for hours, scarcely stopping for dinner. Also that year, he responded to a revival meeting altar call at the Baptist church that the Atwoods attended, becoming a born-again Christian, shortly before the family moved to California. At age 14, Atwood started playing the piano at a church in Pasadena and became interested in studying the music of his favorite composer, J. S. Bach. In later years he attributed his hymn-playing technique to the influence of Bach and the study of classical music.
As a 17-year-old in 1929, he began playing the piano regularly for Paul Rader when the Chicago evangelist started a Tabernacle in Los Angeles. It was the first time young Atwood had the thrill of playing a concert grand piano. It was also the first experience he had playing on a live radio broadcast, accompanying the singers. In 1933, he began playing the piano for the radio broadcasts on KFAC of the then-new Country Church of Hollywood, which had as its theme song "The Church in the Wildwood". It was then, said Atwood, that he realized gospel radio music was his life's calling. Atwood was often called upon to preach at the Country Church and he was eventually ordained by the church's board. It was also there that he met his future wife, Grace. Atwood continued playing piano at the Country Church of Hollywood until 1938. Among the vocal soloists he accompanied was Wilbur Nelson.
Through these experiences and practice, Atwood developed his skill in improvisation, writing: "As I look back now, I really can't tell when I found the ability to improvise. I suppose it was in those [high school] days that I began to experiment, playing the bass in octaves and filling in the chords of the right hand. It was in those first efforts when I came up with the right harmonies, and the runs began to fall into place".
Music career
Atwood joined evangelist Charles E. Fuller's popular Old Fashioned Revival Hour nationwide radio broadcast in 1937, accompanying the choir and paid quartet on the piano. By the end of that year, the weekly program with Atwood at the piano was heard by a nationwide audience of 10 million listeners on 88 stations. In its heyday in the 1940s and early 1950s, the program was carried on hundreds of stations across the United States on the Mutual Broadcasting System and, later, the ABC Radio Network, and the audience had grown to an estimated 20 million listeners. Atwood played the piano for the entire 32-year run of the Old Fashioned Revival Hour, until Fuller's death in 1968. Atwood wrote of the broadcast's theme song, "Heavenly Sunshine", "A thrill reaches to my toes each time I play [it]", and the familiar piece was his most-requested number during concerts. He continued to play on the successor program, The Joyful Sound, when David Hubbard succeeded Fuller.
Atwood's signature style of continuous left-hand triplet-note octave doublings and right-hand arpeggios captivated audiences and was widely copied by many other evangelical pianists of the period. His prominence was enhanced by the popularity of radio as a mass medium for evangelism in the 1930s–1950s by such radio evangelists as Fuller, M. R. DeHaan, Theodore Epp, Percy Crawford, and, later, Billy Graham. Atwood was known as "the most imitated pianist in gospel music" for his improvisations and arrangements of traditional hymns. In his treatise on the increasing importance of the piano in twentieth-century American Protestant evangelism, The Origins of Evangelical Pianism, author Theodore L. Gentry called Atwood "probably the most important pianist of the radio revival period".