The Blind Boys of Alabama _320
Philip Key talks to the last surviving member of the original Five Blind Boys of Alabama
IN THE world of Gospel, The Five Blind Boys of Alabama are legendary, a group of lads who got together in 1939 with a determination to sing Gospel and so became one of its biggest names.
The group is still going, renamed simply The Blind Boys of Alabama, and with founding member Jimmy Carter still singing with them.
He also still lives in Alabama and it was in Montgomery that I called him to talk about the group’s forthcoming visit to Liverpool.
“What time is it there? It is two in the morning here,” he exclaimed in a dark, gruff voice. But this was not the overture to a complaint, rather the reverse. Carter was in merry mood, chuckling often as we went over his career.
He wasn’t getting ready for bed, either. “I’m up now so I’ll stay up,” he said.
Carter’s age is a bit of a mystery – “I am over 50 and the rest you can speculate on” – but there is no doubt he has reached veteran status in the music business.
He was born blind and it was at Alabama’s Institute for the Blind that he first met up with his fellow singers.
“We all grew up in the Church, our parents were Christian people, we were taught about God and Jesus Christ and that’s why we decided to sing Gospel music,” he explains in a matter-of-fact way.
They would sing in churches, schools and “mostly in the South”. They did not take to the road until 1944.
In those days, they were known as the Happyland Jubilee Singers. “Then we went to New York to work for a promoter of Gospel shows. He had us from Alabama, and a group from Mississippi, so to sell it he promoted it as the Five Blind Boys of Alabama versus the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. It was a big battle of music between us in an outdoor stadium there – and the Boys of Mississippi won.”
It did not halt the onward success of the Alabama Boys, while the Mississippi group also did OK. “All their members have passed on but the group is still going,” explains Carter.
The Alabama Boys have also had personnel changes over the years and while some founding members survive – one, George Scott, died in 2005, aged 75 – Carter is now “the only active one”.
They have lasted by a determination to sing only Gospel music, although Carter does sometimes refer to it as Gospel soul. “We just sang the traditional Gospel music, the old-style songs like Down By the Riverside that anyone can relate to.
“But, having said that, we do sing contemporary even though I don’t like it. But you have to change with the times, have to learn to please everyone. Some people like contemporary so you have to give them what they want as they are, after all, our public, our fans.”
And pop songs? “We don’t do anything but Gospel, that’s all we do,” says Carter firmly.
It has not, however, stopped them performing and recording with other stars like Bonnie Raitt, Peter Gabriel, Solomon Burke and even Lou Reed. There have also been four Grammy Awards.
Their latest musical excursion has taken them to New Orleans to record Gospel songs with some of the jazzmen in that town.
“Yes, that’s something new.” exclaims Carter. “We have never had that kind of music behind us before. It’s not bad – it sounds good to me.”
Having listened to the CD that has resulted – The Blind Boys of Alabama Down in New Orleans – one can say that it is a little more than “not bad” and is a great Gospel recording. Among those playing with the group are Allen Toussaint, The Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the Hot 8 Brass Band.
The group changed its name “six or seven years ago” when its numbers increased. There are now seven of them and not all are blind. “We have four blind members and three who can see. We have to have some sighted help, you know.”
Certainly, Carter does not let his blindness get in the way of a normal life. “We don’t call it a handicap, just a little inconvenience,” he says.
“But I can sense people, feel the nearness of people and I am a good judge of character. I know who I can trust and who I can’t. It’s a gift from God and I thank Him for that.”
The group tours a lot, between 150 and 200 days a year. It means Carter cannot always get to church when he wants, but he does so whenever there is an opportunity. “I have not forgotten my roots came from the church, came from Christian Gospel music.”
It is a feeling he and the group take to their live concerts. “Our Gospel message is to make you feel something that you have never felt before,” he declares. “People leave our concerts and come up to us and say they have never felt like that before and that’s what it’s all about.
“It’s a good feeling. On stage, we tell people that if they want to shout or jump up and down that’s good because that’s the Good News working.” Their latest trip will bring them to Liverpool’s Philharmonic Hall on March 27, part of an English tour and their first visit to Liverpool for “many years”.
Carter likes England. “I love your accent when the ladies talk – and I love your fish and chips,” he says.
Alabama was, of course, at the centre of many of America’s racial troubles in the 1960s, but that’s something on which Carter does not like to dwell. “All that’s behind us, and we don’t even like to think about it now. We just celebrated Martin Luther King’s birthday this week which is now a national holiday. Everything is going along. We still have a long way to go but we have also come a long way, too.”
As for any confusion with the other Jimmy Carter, the former President, the Gospel-singing Carter admits he has had some fun with it. “I did meet him once, but unfortunately I never got the chance to tell him my name.”
THE Blind Boys of Alabama are at the Philharmonic Hall, 7.30pm, March 27.
