“Blind Boys of Alabama Battling” – Lee Hildebrand in the San Francisco Chronicle

From The San Francisco Chronicle. Lee Hildebrand has written many times before on the subject of black gospel quartets.

Blind Boys of Alabama battling

LEE HILDEBRAND
Friday, June 27, 2008

For 60 years, ever since a New Jersey promoter booked two sets of blind gospel singers – the Happyland Singers from Alabama and the Jackson Harmoneers from Mississippi – and advertised the program as “Battle of the Blind Boys,” a friendly rivalry has existed between the two. They soon changed their names to the Original Five Blind Boys of Alabama and the Original Five Blind Boys of Mississippi and often toured together, with members sometimes jumping from one group to the other.

Although the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi remain active on the shrinking gospel-quartet circuit, they have sunk into relative obscurity compared with the Blind Boys of Alabama, as they’ve been called in recent years. Since 1985, when a group billed as the Five Blind Boys of Alabama – actually Clarence Fountain, Samuel Butler Jr. and Caleb “Bobby” Butler from the Alabama group and Jimmy Carter and J.T. Clinkscales from the Mississippi group – began appearing collectively as Oedipus in the hit musical theater production “Gospel at Colonus,” the Alabama group has moved into the entertainment mainstream. The repertoire, while still containing many traditional gospel selections, expanded to include material by such secular artists as George Clinton, Bob Dylan, Fatboy Slim, Ben Harper, Prince, Tom Waits and Stevie Wonder. Four such Blind Boys of Alabama CDs, issued by Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records, received Grammy Awards in the traditional soul gospel category.

“Down in New Orleans,” the Blind Boys of Alabama’s January release for Time Life, has received rave reviews and seems certain to capture another Grammy. Despite all the attention given the disc, little has been made of the fact that it’s the first in the group’s 60-year recording history not to include founding member and principal lead singer Fountain – the result of a bitter battle between him and the group’s management.

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Blind Boys of Alabama Battling