ANN ARBOR, MI — Willis Patterson treated others like a big family, and singers around the world revered him for his care in his community, job, music and advocacy for Black performers, some who knew him said.
“He used to laugh and talk to me,” Louise Toppin, a vocalist and professor of music at UM, said. “He’s like, ‘You’re doing too much, you’re doing too much.’ And I said, ‘We have you as an example. What are we supposed to do?’”
Patterson, a talented singer, Ann Arbor native and the first Black professor at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance, died Oct. 22 in Ann Arbor. He was 94…