Since 1939, The Blind Boys of Alabama have sung a fervent blend of traditional and contemporary Gospel music. Much has changed during these seven prolific decades. Stylistic phases have waxed and waned; personnel has come and gone. 78 r.p.m. records have given way to LPs, followed by eight-track tapes, cassettes, and CDs. The Blind Boys’ audience – once rigidly segregated and confined to traditional Gospel venues – now reflects the group’s eclectic, global following, while their repertoire has expanded to embrace secular songs with a strongly spiritual message. This wide acceptance is also evidenced by their four Grammy Awards, an honor that didn’t exist when the Blind Boys started out. Even so, the Blind Boys’ lengthy saga remains a steadfast testament to constancy. Singer Jimmy Carter, who was there when the group was first formed, leads the band today with the firm conviction, joyous commitment, and gravitas that befit an elder statesman.

“You see, some people think that Gospel singers should only sing Gospel songs. But we believe in songs with a positive message. Now we will never cross over into pop music and start singing love songs; people have asked us to do that many a time and we have always turned them down. We were there in the studio when Sam Cooke crossed over to pop music from the Soul Stirrers, years ago. But I am not one of those Gospel singers who think blues and rhythm & blues is the Devil’s music. No, indeed! I love the blues. I am a big fan of Blind Boy Fuller, Sonny Boy Williamson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, B. B. King.

“From way back, we always knew who those blues and R&B artists were and we admired them all, including the ones from New Orleans like Fats Domino. We didn’t perform with them, way back in the day, because Gospel was separate. But we perform with them today.” In recent years, The Blind Boys have also performed and recorded with the likes of Bonnie Raitt, Randy Travis, Peter Gabriel, Solomon Burke, Lou Reed, and Ben Harper. “No­w, one famous New Orleans artist who we did perform with,” Carter goes on, “was Mahalia Jackson – one of the greatest Gospel singers ever!”

At the core of The Blind Boys’ sound is four-part harmony that makes dramatic use of contrasting vocal leads.  Immensely popular in religious circles – thanks to seminal groups such as The Golden Gate Quartet—this style was later adapted as a key component in secular rhythm & blues.

Birmingham evolved as a center for this four-part Gospel harmony sound, leading some experts to dub it “the Alabama style.” It was at Alabama’s Talladega Institute for the Blind that the five blind boys first came together, initially calling their group The Happyland Singers. “The Happyland name lasted until 1948,” Carter explains. “Then a promoter in New Jersey booked us on a show, along with another blind group called the Jackson Harmonies. He decided to hype it up and he billed it as a contest between ‘the Five Blind Boys of Alabama and the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi.’ Both us groups liked that idea and we changed our names behind it.”

The rechristened Alabamians barnstormed the African-American Gospel circuit for decades.” Then In the early 1980s, the Blind Boys of Alabama performed in the Obie Award-winning musical The Gospel at Colonus, in which a classic Greek tragedy by Sophocles was presented in a contemporary Pentecostal motif. “That play really took us to another level,” Carter says, “and ever since we been playing all over the world. I never thought we’d still be doing it, all these years later.”