Echoes of the South
The Blind Boys of Alabama
In 1944 a teenage gospel sextet from the Alabama Institute for the Negro Deaf and Blind appeared on “Echoes of the South,” a popular Birmingham program hosted at radio WSGN. They had formed in 1939, inspired by their idols the Golden Gate Quartet, calling themselves the Happy Land Jubilee Singers. They toured widely through the latter 1940s in a friendly rivalry with Mississippi’s Jackson Harmoneers, another popular blind gospel group. After a knockout show in Newark, New Jersey in 1948, they rechristened themselves the Five Blind Boys of Alabama. Nearly 85 years on, with a generation-crossing lineup, the Blind Boys of Alabama continue to record and tour today.
Founder and lead singer Clarence Fountain (1930–2018) composed much of the Blind Boys’ original repertoire. When failing health forced Fountain to step back in 2007, soon after the passing of co-founding baritone George Scott (1929–2005), Jimmy Carter, the remaining original member, assumed group leadership.
Carter himself retired in 2023 after finishing the present recording, but his reflections on the group’s history figure critically in the documentary video This May Be the Last Time, which assays the studio recording experience of Echoes of the South (Single Lock Records) outside Muscle Shoals, Alabama. Of the songs “Work Until My Days Are Done” and “The Last Time” (Carter solos on the latter), Carter observes,
I have been doing this just about all my life. This is all I know. This might be my last time. My voice, these old vocal cords, they had their better days. I hope I have a few more shots left. I hope that when I have to pass the torch to someone else, they will be willing to receive it and keep the group going.
On the opening track, “Send It on Down,” over gospel swell, Carter intones, “Well, here we are, the Blind Boys of Alabama, you know, we’ve been around a long time, but the good news is, we’re still here… and I wonder, can I get a witness this evening?” The hand-clapping, foot-stomping gospel shout sets the tone of a recording that pays tribute to the group’s history and testifies to the wealth of talent that has garnered five Grammys, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and induction into the Gospel Hall of Fame.
Carter’s retirement and the passing of Ben Moore (1941–2022) and Paul Beasley (1944–2023)—all three feature prominently on both the CD and video—passed leadership to Ricky McKinnie, who joined the Blind Boys in 1989, first as drummer and road manager, and then as a singer.
Short of seeing the group in live performance, it is difficult to convey the power of old-school gospel energy they sustain, but their September 2023 appearance at New York’s City Winery, with three brilliant new members, confirms that the Blind Boys tradition continues. Says McKinnie,
Today people are looking for peace. They want something to make them feel good, and they are looking for something that is real. Our music is real, authentic, and it is a real good music. That is what people are looking for. So, we try to do that.
The youngest member, singer-guitarist and music director Joey Williams now plays a key role in assuring that continuity. About his relationship since boyhood with the Blind Boys he reflects,
It is a real, real learning experience, besides being one of the greatest moves I have ever made in my life. Just growing up with them I learned more than I ever could have learned in schools like Julliard and all these music schools… To be with them and experience what is going on with them, and their sharing that with me, it just poured into me. I was just like an open book. You know, I just opened up and let it all in. So, I have been taking it in for years and years.
About “Keep on Pushin’”—the Curtis Mayfield Civil Rights anthem, where Paul Beasley’s astounding falsetto1 conjures the soul of Mayfield himself—Williams observes, “That is what I feel is the spirit of the Blind Boys, just to keep going, keep spreading the message, keep sharing the music, and just keep going.”
With Carter at the lead, the CD wraps with a rendition of “Heaven Help Us All,” Stevie Wonder’s 1970 knockout, conveying a message never more topical than today, not least as purveyed by the Blind Boys of Alabama:
Heaven help the black man if he struggles one more day
Heaven help the white man if he turns and walks away
Heaven help the man who kicks a man who’s trying to crawl
Heaven help us all
Heaven help the boy who won’t reach twenty-one
Heaven help the man who gave that boy a gun
Heaven help the people with their backs against the wall
Heaven help us all.
Find The Blind Boys of Alabama online.
CREDITS: This piece first appeared in slightly different form at RootsWorld, the online magazine of “music from someplace you aren’t, music with roots, music of the world and for the world. OK?” Compelling reading and listening await there—check it out.
Author’s photo of The Blind Boys of Alabama in concert, New York City, September 17, 2023
Also hear Beasley’s astounding falsetto on “Friendship,” “Jesus You Been Good to Me,” “Keep on Pushin’” and “Paul’s Prayer.”
What a treasure tour, and trove.