Lynette Dupree-Richardson, who built career on stage and TV, dies at age 58

When Lynette Dupree-Richardson was a young child, she had a habit of imitating relatives and family friends.

Their stance, their stride, the voices, right down to specific speech inflections — Ms. Dupree-Richardson could master them all. Ms. Dupree-Richardson, a Rochester native who died Feb. 6 in Los Angeles at the age of 58, was already charting her future.

"We called her the mockingbird," said her sister, Mychelle Dupree. "She mimicked people all the time at an early age."

That ability, her family learned, was a precursor to what would become a career on stage and screen. A powerfully bluesy voice, crafted in church and choirs, became her calling card throughout roles she would inhabit in musicals.

And she went on to carve out a livelihood in television, with a bevy of smaller and more prominent appearances on popular shows, including "The Good Place," "Law and Order" and "Desperate Housewives." She also provided voice-overs, most commonly as Ma Tembo, an elephant who leads a herd in Disney's "The Lion Guard," an animated series based on "The Lion King."

"I even got to die on 'ER,'" she once told the Democrat and Chronicle in an interview.

Like most in the industry, she knew the ups and downs of trying to survive in show business. But her indefatigable spirit and assured personality kept her in jobs throughout her career.

"My sister was one of those people that when you told her 'no,' it just made her do better," Mychelle Dupree said. "It just made her go out and work harder."

Ms. Dupree-Richardson, born Feb. 15, 1964, in Rochester, graduated from Gates Chili High School and attended SUNY Brockport for two years. She later moved to New York City, then to Los Angeles. She married Charles Richardson on July 1, 2006.

She and her husband had been childhood friends.

Dupree-Richardson performed in national and international tours, including “Dreamgirls,” “The Color Purple” and “Broadway’s Best.” In a 2009 tour of “The Color Purple” that stopped in Rochester, Ms. Dupree-Richardson (then using her maiden name, Lynette Dupree) told how her passion for music was fostered and then flourished in local churches. The story of “The Color Purple,” she said then, spoke to her because “it shows love’s redemptive power.”

She also performed on Broadway in “Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk.”

One of Dupree-Richardson's stunning vocal performances can be found on YouTube, as in 2016 she belts out "Nobody's Listenin' " from "Josephine," a musical based on the life of Josephine Baker, the singer-actress who performed in France, helped the French Resistance in World War II, and shunned the segregated clubs in the United States. The clip ends with the sound of raucous and appreciative audience applause.

A Los Angeles resident before her death, Ms. Dupree-Richardson directed the interfaith Los Angeles Third Community Praise Choir, returning to her roots in the church.

"When she sang at church on Sundays, that was something," her husband, Charles Richardson, said at a March 25 memorial service in Los Angeles. "I felt the presence of God in her voice and I knew I was blessed just to be a part of something … because it was coming straight from the heart. It was raw and it was real, and you felt it as soon as you heard it.

"I know God showed up because he wanted to hear it too."

The cause of death for Ms. Dupree-Richardson was not released publicly. Her sister, Mychelle, said Ms. Dupree-Richardson was, away from the stage, a very private person, not informing people she was ill in her final months.

Besides her husband and sister, Ms. Dupree-Richardson’s survivors include her father, Leon Dupree; mother, Barbara Dupree; brother, Leon (Lisa) Dupree; sister-in-law, Beverly Scott; aunts, Eunice (Jesse) Scott and Mae Dupree; and other relatives and friends.

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Lynette Dupree-Richardson, who built career on stage and TV, dies at 58