Five Blind Boys of Mississippi – I Won’t Complain

The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi
I Won’t Complain
Meltone Entertainment Group 2009
www.myspace.com/fiveblindboysofmississippi

So much deserved attention is given the Grammy Award-winning Blind Boys of Alabama that many don’t realize the Blind Boys of Mississippi are still out on the gospel highway also.

Led today by long-time member Sandy Foster, the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi have been performing for 66 years. They were founded in Piney Woods, Mississippi as the Jackson Harmoneers and featured the explosive – and I mean explosive – lead vocals of the incomparable Archie Brownlee.

The quartet’s new CD, on the late Melvin Couch’s Meltone imprint, is I Won’t Complain. Foster leads most of the tracks with a raw-throated shout reminiscent of the Mighty Clouds’ Joe Ligon and a spontaneity that echoes Brownlee’s own. The quartet backs Foster with the kind of spit-polished harmonies characteristic of today’s quartets.

The album includes new songs, quartet standards and a few from the Blind Boys archives. The title track is an extended Foster interpretation of the modern favorite written by the late Rev. Paul Jones and recorded by everyone from Andrae Crouch to Albertina Walker and now the Mississippi Blind Boys.

There are several stunners on I Won’t Complain. An a cappella version of “Steal Away” is breathtakingly muscular and robust, down to its cascading conclusion. “Rock in a Weary Land,” a Mississippi Blind Boys classic, gets an appropriate up-tempo reading, as does “Lord Save Me.” The album’s highlight is “I’ve Been Born Again,” which features a driving tempo with curlicue guitar riffs that propel the quartet into revival mode.

Groups like the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi prove that classic quartets never die. Period.

Four of Five Stars

gPod Picks: “Steal Away,” “Rock in a Weary Land,” “I’ve Been Born Again.”