by GERARD DEE

These days music groups get a medal for staying together for six years. So how does a group keep it together for over 60? According to Clarence Fountain, the founder of venerable gospel group the Blind Boys of Alabama, it’s very simple.

“We have four blind guys and three sighted guys. You can hire sighted guys anytime, but the blind guys—we’re more together than anything you’ve ever seen, because we know if we don’t stay out there singing, there ain’t going to be no eating tomorrow. It’s not complicated.”

The Blind Boys have been singing for their supper since 1939. Back then, there wasn’t a whole bunch of support for a bunch of poor, black, blind teenagers from the South who decided they wanted to sing for a living. But Fountain says they refused to let the nay-sayers bring them down.

“We realized that we were pretty good, so we didn’t really worry with nobody, we didn’t really listen to what they said. We always wanted to sing to the masses of people, we always wanted to sing to like, the folk in Montreal.”

Not only have the Blind Boys sung for Montreal (they were here most recently during last summer’s Jazz Fest), they’ve sung for audiences all over Europe and Asia. The reason for their across-the-board appeal may be their constant penchant for reinvention. Their most recent efforts, last year’s Spirit of the Century and their current set Higher Ground, marry old-school gospel stylings with contemporary music.

“It’s not easy. You have to keep up with the times, keep up with the flavour of music that’s out. If you’re not able to do that then you need to go on and sit down. Back in the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, we were only singing to black audiences, and now we’re singing to the masses. It makes a big difference.”

Prayers, not lovers

One way the Boys have appealed to the masses is by interpreting popular songs and giving them their own twist. On Higher Ground they cover tracks by artists as diverse as Funkadelic, Jimmy Cliff and Prince. But the process of choosing songs is not so much about the artist as it is about the lyrics.

“We sit down and listen to the song. And if there was a line in there we didn’t like, we would rewrite the line. That’s how we could sing [Stevie Wonder’s] ‘Higher Ground,’ because we took the line out that said ‘lovers keep on lovin’’ and we put ‘prayers keep on praying.’ See when you do things like that, then you don’t fall on the rock ’n’ roll side.”

Performing secular music, or rather not performing it, is something Fountain and the rest of the group feel very strongly about. “I wouldn’t go beyond my boundaries. I think the Lord wouldn’t be pleased and I want to stay in the good graces of the Lord. But sometimes you have to venture out into the world and do things that are maybe a little offbeat, and that’s why we did the Stevie song. We knew it was a rock ’n’ roll tune but it makes a difference with a gospel group doing it. That’s cool.”

Two other songs that made the cut did so for very different reasons. The group first recorded the track “Stand by Me” in 1953. Fountain says they decided to include it on their current set for two reasons. “The first thing is, it’s my song, and the second thing is, if we re-record it, we get some of the royalties off of it. Don’t give everybody everything!”

Keeping an eye on them

The inspirational track “I May Not Can See” made it on for a higher purpose. “We wanted to let people know that, hey, maybe we can’t see, but we can see better than you because our minds might extend further than yours. Or maybe because we know we got somebody up there watching over us, looking after us because all these years it wouldn’t have been safe to go all over the world with nobody watching over us.”

There has definitely been some divine intervention of late. After being nominated several times for a Grammy, they finally received the nod last year for Spirit of the Century in the Best Traditional Soul Gospel category. But Fountain says that as amazing as that was, it wasn’t their most memorable career highlight. That distinction goes to the group’s role in the 1983 Broadway production The Gospel at Colonus.

“Winning the Grammy was good, but that wasn’t the best thing that happened to us. We could do without the Grammy, but just for people to recognize that you did win it makes a very big difference. The biggest thing that happened to us in our career was Broadway because you never find a whole lotta people that can say they went to Broadway.” :

With Peter Gabriel and Hukwe Zawose
at the Bell Centre on Thursday and Friday,
Nov. 28–29, 7:30pm, $46–$86

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