More dynamite than James Brown. More soul than Ray Charles. More jump-up shoutin’ hand-clappin’ and “amens” than a southern Baptist preacher on Sunday Morning. It was the Blind Boys of Alabama bringing more fire and brimstone than the holy ghost. Their recent one night, one show only (two hours) at City Winery in Manhattan was one of those unforgettable performances that will only be expounded upon with each new revelation. The mesmerizing group prompted three standing ovations of joyous pandemonium, solidifying an encore—a spirited rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” (recorded on their 2002 album by the same song title that Wonder had already set in gospel tradition), as the sold-out audience remained standing, shoutin’ and clappin,’ having too much energy to sit.
The Blind Boys of Alabama, formally billed as The Five Blind Boys of Alabama, and Clarence Fountain (a founding member who transitioned in 2018) and the Blind Boys of Alabama, have sustained a career spanning over 80 years with a changing roster of musicians over its history. The group was founded in 1939 in Talladega, Alabama, and first sang together as part of the school chorus at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Deaf and Blind in Talladega.
The Blind Boys came together at the height of segregation, peaking lynchings and stringent Jim Crow laws, as the Great Depression was just about to end. It was the same year, 1939, that Marian Anderson sang at the Lincoln Memorial, after the Daughters of the American Revolution denied her performance to an integrated audience at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.
The Blind Boys career commenced in the first half of the 20th century, when jubilee quartets followed tradition singing Negro hymns in a most dignified matter, as demonstrated by the Fisk Jubilee Singers, organized at Fisk University. The phrase “hard gospel” gave rise to gospel’s recognized popularity by secular audiences during the 1940s and 1950s, into the current era where gospel music has progressed into an eclectic rainbow tinged with pop, soul, and hip hop. “We have followed the gospel trend and set the gospel trend,” said Ricky McKinnie, the group’s leader, and member since 1990. Other members of the group are: Sterling Glass and music director/guitarist Joey Williams.
The Blind Boys’ repertoire covered a lot of territory in their 1982 recording of “I’m a Soldier in the Eyes of the Lord,” a real foot stomper, with harmony that infiltrated your soul with a heavenly vibration. Their rendition of “Amazing Grace” was an arrangement of “The House of the Rising Sun” from their album “Spirit of the Century” on Peter Gabriel’s label Real World Records (2001). Their version was drenched in intense harmonies, with thick guitar licks.
The five-time GRAMMY winners, dressed in dapper blue suits with white shirts, bowties and dark glasses introduced songs from their just released album “Echoes Of the South,” which includes “Work Until My Days Are Done.” The tune starts off in a mid-tempo range with unshakable harmony, then the hand claps come in, and the spirit leaps to 180; listen to that guitar and jump up and feel the spirit. Another album song introduced was “Friendship,” a slower song with great lyrics and light drums that carry the pace. “We got that friendship, the kind that lasts a lifetime/through all the hardships.” Go on, now! And the tempo jumps up with “You Can’t Hurry God.”
“ Echoes Of the South,” is their first album in years. It pays tribute to longtime members they recently lost, Paul Beasley and Benjamin Moore. This is their first complete album that was totally recorded in their home state, at The NuttHouse studio, in Sheffield, Alabama.
The new album is a “homecoming” in many instances, including the use of braille on Blind Boys album cover for the first time. It also features covers of the group’s longtime friends and collaborators like Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield and Pops Staples. Their list of collaborators also includes the likes of Lou Reed, Tom Waits, and Bonnie Raitt.
Throughout their eight decades, the Gospel Hall of Famers have remained committed to singing gospel, although record labels have attempted to lure them over to music’s secular side. These same labels were also aggressive in offering secular deals to the likes of Mahalia Jackson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Mighty Clouds of Joy; the great gospel group The Caravans, that launched the careers of Dorothy Norwood, Shirley Caesar, and Rev. James Cleveland; and The Dixie Hummingbirds, who like the Blind Boys are still performing today after 80 years. These gospel singers can be credited with influencing the soul genre. Their styles, and musicianship shouts and hollers paved the way for singers like Sam Cooke and Ray Charles to easily transition to rock and roll and R&B. That same gospel “soul,” that big bold timbre influenced James Brown, Jackie Wilson, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Chuck Berry.
“If you do the work, God will carry you Through,” said McKinnie during our recent phone interview.
Music is the soul of America, it documents the goings-on. The musicians are our warriors, their recordings and live performances speak of now and yester now—even into the future remember Sun Ra. There is always a message in the music. “The music is in our soul, it is the nourishment of the ancestors,” said Randy Weston. “We must listen, learn and continue to grow.”
Trombonist, composer, and activist Craig Harris was commissioned to compose a piece which he entitled “Bluocracy Project.” “Bluocracy explores the great democratic process that is essential to the music called ‘jazz’ and examines how it parallels the fiber of American relationships, especially those considering gender, race, class and politics,” explained Harris.
His masterwork “Bluocracy Project/ Craig Harris and Harlem Night Songs” recently premiered in Harlem at the Mount Morris Ascension Presbyterian Church (where he presents his weekly Friday night concerts). The composition reflected what America could be, would be, and should be if it wasn’t so caught up in its own self-destruction and denial. Harris is the visionary newscaster and bandleader who disperses the truth straight up, with his large ensemble. The composed music reflects the lyrical phrasing of Langston Hughes and the defiant intellect of W.E.B. DuBois, with the poignant urgency of a piercing Amiri Baraka poem. The poet Naomi Extra radiated like a full moon in the dark night dropping critical truth on America’s skirted present and past.
The composition is an amalgamation of straight ahead jazz to improvisations on the edge: sometimes disjointed, sometimes united swing, but always exhilarating moving ahead. And that’s jazz, that’s black music, that’s music in America seeking the truth, constructing questions and provoking comments. “Bluocracy” brought people to their feet, and the standing ovation was well deserved. The nine-piece ensemble was amazing. In a few weeks “Bluocracy” will perform in San Francisco. Personally, I can’t wait for the CD—to play over and over!
“The Bluocracy Project” is one of those definitive master works that should be acknowledged with the same enthusiasm as Max Roach’s “Freedom Now Suite!,” Wynton Marsalis’ “Blood on the Fields,” and Archie Shepp’s “Attica Blues.”