Raymond Robert Repp (September 17, 1942 – April 26, 2020) was an American singer-songwriter credited with introducing folk music into Catholic masses with his 1965 album Mass for Young Americans, an album that formed the earliest stirrings of Contemporary Christian music.
After that early collection, he recorded 11 collections which have been translated into 28 languages, and won ASCAP's "Award for Special Contributions to the Field of Music" six times. His songs include: The Best of Ray Repp Vol. 1 & 2 and Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow, all songs written from 1965–1985. Repp's music has been recorded by those outside the Catholic Church. Christian punk outfit Undercover and Christian rocker Phil Keaggy have covered Repp's work on their own discs. He also recorded non-religious material. "Don't Go In the Street" and "Apple Pie," both from The Time Has Not Come True, featured sometimes humorous, prescient left-leaning social commentary.
Repp drew a measure of notoriety from the mainstream journalistic media in 1997 when he sued composer Andrew Lloyd Webber, asserting that Lloyd Webber had plagiarized portions of his "Phantom Song" from his own composition "Till You." Lloyd Webber, however, cross-litigated in counter-accusation that Repp had, in turn, plagiarized portions of "Till You" from "Close Every Door," from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. Repp ultimately lost the case.
He was married to, and lived with, his husband of twenty years, Richard Alther, a writer and painter, in their homes in Southern California and Vermont. Alther wrote "The Decade of Blind Dates," about his past relationships as a homosexual divorcee, and his marriage to Repp.