Blinded ?by the light

Perseverance paid off for the Blind Boys of Alabama—perseverance and a little bit of danger. As a kid, Jimmy Carter used to sneak away from the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind in Talladega with Clarence Fountain and other friends who dreamed of becoming a successful singing group together. They could only practice covertly off campus because any professional entertainment aspirations were discouraged at the school. There was a light in this world, and they wouldn’t find it there.

That was 1939, and what began then in secret has become a passed-on success story about one of the most indelible Southern gospel groups of all time, with the determination to keep chooglin’ along, to let the power of the message buoy the messengers no matter what physically ails them.

The band was tempted to cross over to R&B and the certainty of big dollars in the 1950s along with their friend and future superstar Sam Cooke, but the Blind Boys stayed spiritual. The road to recognition was narrower and longer their way, and the group bizarrely did not win its first Grammy until 63 years into a soulful sojourn that has come to embody the late-career renaissance. Now well into his 70s, Carter is the last remaining co-founder of the original Blind Boys. He is the cornerstone of the long-running group’s vocal power and its soul—if not sole—survivor.

“We’re just like a family, and Clarence [who entered semi-retirement in 2006] had to pass the torch on to me,” Carter says. “When I get ready to retire, I’ll pass it on to someone else, but I hope I’m carrying the torch all right.”

From humble beginnings, the band has since toured the globe and made converts out of millions tuned in to The Tonight Show and the Late Show with David Letterman. The group’s joyful noise nearly blew the roof off the Millennium Biltmore in Los Angeles in front of a ballroom filled with Louisianans and Los Angelenos before the 2008 Grammys that saw the Blind Boys take home the gold for the year’s best gospel recording. It was the sound of faith rewarded.

“It took us a while, because for so long we were known only in the black Southern circuit,” Carter says. “We weren’t exposed to wider audiences until much more recently. In all parts of the world, the response now has been great.”

After the group celebrated Louisiana staples with the Grammy-winning Down in New Orleans in 2008, their Duets anthologized 10 stellar collaborations with the likes of Solomon Burke, Ben Harper, Charlie Musselwhite and Bonnie Raitt—many of them Grammy-nominated—and added fresh cuts featuring Lou Reed, John Hammond and others in 2009. Not to slow down, last year’s elegiac Faith Moves Mountains reunited Carter and the current Blind Boys with co-founder and Baton Rouge resident Clarence Fountain, whose ailing health has prevented him from touring with the Blind Boys since 2006.

“I look forward to coming down to Baton Rouge in March, and I’ll make sure Clarence is there, too,” Carter says. “We’re going to have a great time.”

The Blind Boys of Alabama perform two concerts at Manship Theatre on March 18 and 19, both at 8 p.m. Visit manshiptheatre.org for ticket information. blindboys.com