In 1993, Rich Mullins released A Liturgy, a Legacy, & a Ragamuffin Band, an album that CCM Magazine would later rank third on its list of the 100 Greatest Albums in Christian Music — a placement that reflected the esteem in which his work was held within the genre he spent his career inhabiting.

Born Richard Wayne Mullins on October 21, 1955, in Richmond, he grew up to become an American singer, songwriter, and composer working in contemporary Christian music. He attended Northeastern High School before pursuing his education at Cincinnati Christian University and later at Friends University. His recording career produced a body of work that drew sustained attention from listeners and critics alike. His 1988 album Winds of Heaven, Stuff of Earth earned a spot at number thirty-one on CCM Magazine's ranking of the genre's greatest albums, and The World As Best As I Remember It, Volume One, released in 1991, climbed higher still, placing seventh on the same list. Among the songs he wrote, two worship pieces — "Awesome God" and "Sometimes by Step" — became the works most closely associated with his name.

The years between those recordings and his death were marked by continued output within contemporary Christian music. A Liturgy, a Legacy, & a Ragamuffin Band arrived in 1993, and its high placement in CCM Magazine's retrospective ranking suggested that listeners and the publication itself regarded it as a career peak. His three albums appearing in that ranking place him among the more durably recognized figures in the genre's recorded history.

Mullins died on September 19, 1997, in Bloomington, at the age of forty-one. The Library of Congress Name Authority File carries his authorized label as "Mullins, Rich," a cataloguing detail that speaks to the documented place his recordings occupy in American musical archives. CCM Magazine's decision to include three of his albums among the 100 greatest in Christian music stands as one of the more concrete measures of how his catalog has been received.