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Founding member of The Gap Band, Ronnie Wilson, passes at 73

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TULSA, Okla. — Local celebrity Ronnie Wilson, a founding member of the Gap Band, has died.

According to TMZ, Wilson's wife Linda Boulware-Wilson confirms he passed around 10 a.m. on Tuesday in his home in Tulsa after suffering a stroke last week. She writes her husband was a “genius with creating, producing and playing the flugelhorn, trumpet, keyboards and singing music.”

Along with his brothers Charlie and Robert, Wilson grew up in Tulsa. The Gap Band gets its name from abbreviating the street names of Greenwood, Archer, and Pine. The Wilsons grew up not far from the area.

The Gap Band grew in popularity in the 1970s and even went on to tour with another Oklahoma native, Leon Russell. The Church Studio remembers Wilson by writing:

The Gap Band received its first big break by being the backup band for Leon Russel’s “Stop All That Jazz,” released in 1974, and then recorded their first album, “Magicians Holiday” with us in 1975. Prayers to friends and family.

Wilson was 73 years old.


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