The Blind Boys of Alabama

Founded by a group of blind nine-year-old friends in 1939 at a school in Talladega, The Blind Boys Of Alabama have gone on to perform their uplifting gospel harmonies across the world during a career that has spanned over 70 years. Starting out singing for WWII soldiers at training camps, they graduated to the circuit of gospel shows that toured the South before dropping out of school to record debut album I Can See Everybody's Mother But Mine (1948). They found success during the 1950s with the albums Oh Lord Stand By Me (1954) and God Is On The Throne (1959) as traditional spiritual and gospel music experienced something of a boom. But, as styles changed in the 1960s and 1970s, their popularity waned despite performing and touring with Dr Martin Luther King Jr at civil rights marches. The group rose to attention again in 1983 when they appeared in the musical The Gospel At Colonus, a landmark play that was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize and broke down racial barriers. It led to The Boys dabbling with more mainstream pop and rock tracks, most notably on the Booker T. Jones produced Deep River (1992), and winning Grammy Awards for the albums Spirit Of The Century (2001), Higher Ground (2002), Go Tell It On The Mountain (2003), There Will Be A Light (2004) and Down In New Orleans (2008). Their cover of Tom Waits' Down In The Hole was used as the opening theme tune to cult TV series The Wire, and the group have performed at the White House in concerts hosted by Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama.