Since 1939, The Blind Boys of Alabama have sung a fervent blend of traditional and contemporary Gospel music. Much has changed during these seven prolific decades. Stylistic phases have waxed and waned; personnel has come and gone. 78 r.p.m. records have given way to LPs, followed by eight-track tapes, cassettes, and CDs. The Blind Boys’ audience – once rigidly segregated and confined to traditional Gospel venues – now reflects the group’s eclectic, global following, while their repertoire has expanded to embrace secular songs with a strongly spiritual message. Such wide acceptance is also evidenced by four Grammy Awards, an honor that didn’t exist when the Blind Boys started out. Even so, the Blind Boys’ lengthy saga remains a steadfast testament to constancy. Singer Jimmy Carter, who was there when the group was first formed, leads the band today with the firm conviction, joyous commitment, and gravitas that befit an elder statesman.
As of 2010, they continue to tour nationally and internationally, led by the soulful Jimmy Lee Carter singing lead vocals. In 2006, Clarence Fountain, the group’s former long-time lead vocalist and founding member limited his touring for health reasons. Another founding member, George Scott, died on March 9, 2005 at the age of 75.
The Blind Boys of Alabama were inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2007 and the long list of accomplishments include their rendition of Tom Waits’ “Way Down in the Hole” was used as the theme song of the HBO series The Wire in its first season. Their cover of Ben Harper’s “I Shall Not Walk Alone” was featured in the first season of ABC’s Lost, in the episode “Confidence Man”.
Founded as the Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet in Norfolk, Virginia in 1934 by Robert Ford, A.C. Griffin, Willie Johnson, William Langford, Henry Owens and Orlandus Wilson. They began as a traditional jubilee quartet, combining the clever arrangements associated with barbershop quartets with rhythms borrowed from the blues and jazz like scat singing.
The makeup of the group changed over the years, as some members were drafted during the war and new members were brought in to replace those who had retired or left to join other groups (one notable member was bass singer Cliff Givens, who was to leave The Gates in 1944 to join The Ink Spots upon the death of original bass Orville “Hoppy” Jones, and later joined Billy Ward and His Dominoes). William Langford joined the group when Griffin left in 1935 and Orlandus Wilson replaced Ford the same year. Clyde Riddick replaced Langford in 1938, Johnson left in 1948 to join “The Jubilaires” and Owens left the group later to become a preacher and solo artist. Riddick remained with the group until his retirement in 1995 and Wilson until his death in 1998.
The Gates had a broad repertoire of styles—from Owens’ mournful, understated approach in songs such as Anyhow or Hush, Somebody’s Calling My Name, to the group’s highly syncopated arrangements in Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. Like The Mills Brothers of popular music, they would often include vocal special effects in their songs, imitating train sounds in songs such as Golden Gate Gospel Train. Langford often sang lead, using his ability to range from baritone to falsetto, while Johnson narrated in a hip syncopated style that became the hallmark for the group. Wilson’s bass served as the anchor for the group and Owens harmonized with Langford and Johnson. The Golden Gate Quartet was inducted into The Vocal Group Hall of Fame in 1998.
Nicknamed “the mother of gospel music” for her efforts to popularize the songs of Thomas A. Dorsey and her influence on other artists. A gospel singer and arranger, Sallie Martin was born near Atlanta, Georgia. In her early twenties she began singing in a church choir in Cleveland, and, by 1929, had moved to Chicago and joined a chorus directed by Thomas Dorsey, later known as the Father of Gospel Music. With him, in 1933, Martin co-founded the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses. During the remainder of the 1930s, she served as Dorsey’s song demonstrator and bookkeeper, singing and selling his compositions at churches and conventions. In some churches Martin encountered resistance, “because, you see, they didn’t like the idea of you having rhythm…but I got saved patting my feet…it would be impossible for me to just absolutely stand still and sing.”
In 1940, she left Dorsey to help start the Martin and Morris Publishing Company, which published the famous Just a Closer Walk with Thee. This song made a name for the Sallie Martin Singers, one of the first all-female gospel groups, and helped usher in the golden age of gospel during the 1940s and 1950s. Her involvement with publishing lasted 30 years, and in a 1981 interview, Martin commented, “I think gospel music is a thing of the soul. People sing it if they’re burdened; then again, if they feel happy, they can give it out like that…People will get a message that there must be something behind this. There must be a God or something.”
Clara Mae Ward was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on August 21, 1924 after her mother and father, hoping to find a better life in the north, relocated to Philadelphia attempting to escape the poverty and hard times they experienced in rural South Carolina. Gertrude Ward, Clara’s mother, founded the Ward Singers in 1931 as a family group, then called variously The Consecrated Gospel Singers or The Ward Trio, consisting of herself, her youngest daughter Clara, and her elder daughter Willa. The Ward Singers began touring nationally in 1943, after making a memorable appearance at the National Baptist Convention held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania that year. Henrietta Waddy joined the group in 1947 after Willa Ward retired; she added a rougher alto and the enthusiastic stage manners taken from her South Carolina church background. The group’s performance style, such as the mimed packing of suitcases as part of the song “Packin’ Up”, may have been condemned by some purists as “clowning” but was wildly popular with their audiences.
The addition of Marion Williams, who came out of the Pentecostal tradition growing up in Miami, Florida, brought even more to the group.
By 1950, Clara Ward and the Famous Ward Singers of Philadelphia made their first appearance at Carnegie Hall in New York City on a gospel program titled Negro Music Festival, produced by gospel music pioneer Joe Bostic, sharing the stage with Mahalia Jackson and appearing there at Carnegie Hall on Bostic’s program again in 1952.
Ward’s poor health forced her to retire in the early 1970s. She died after two strokes in 1973. Aretha Franklin and Rev. C. L. Franklin sang at her funeral in Philadelphia in 1973; Marion Williams sang at her second memorial service held days later in Los Angeles, California.
Clara Ward is interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
Born August 18th 1943. Grammy Award-winning American gospel and R&B musician, pianist, choir leader, composer and arranger. He is one of the originators of the urban contemporary gospel sound. He (and the Edwin Hawkins Singers) are best known for his arrangement of “Oh Happy Day” (1968-69), which was included on the Songs of the Century list. The Edwin Hawkins Singers are somewhat less well-known for backing Melanie one year later on the song, “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)”.
At the age of seven Hawkins was already the keyboardist to accompany the family’s gospel choir. Together with Betty Watson he was the co-founder of the Northern California State Youth Choir, which included almost 50 members. This ensemble recorded its first album Let Us Go Into the House of the Lord at the Ephesian Church of God in Christ in Berkeley, California, hoping to sell 500 copies. “Oh Happy Day” was just one of the eight songs on the album.
When radio stations of the San Francisco Bay area started playing “Oh Happy Day”, it became very popular. Featuring the lead vocal of Dorothy Combs Morrison, the subsequently released single rocketed to sales of over a million copies within two months. It crossed over to the pop charts making U.S. #4 and UK #2 in 1969.
It then became an international success, selling more than 7 million copies worldwide, and Hawkins was awarded his first Grammy for it. Hawkins’ arrangement of the song was eventually covered by The Four Seasons on their 1970 album Half & Half.
Altogether Hawkins has won four Grammy Awards:
* 1970: Best Soul Gospel Performance — “Oh Happy Day”, performed by the Edwin Hawkins Singers;
* 1971: Best Soul Gospel Performance — “Every Man Wants to Be Free”, performed by the Edwin Hawkins Singers;
* 1978: Best Soul Gospel Performance, Contemporary — “Wonderful!”;
* 1993: Best Gospel Choir or Chorus Album — choir director on Edwin Hawkins Music & Arts Seminar Mass Choir – Recorded Live in Los Angeles, performed by the Music & Arts Seminar Mass Choir.
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