Blind Boys Of Alabama co-founder Clarence Fountain dies

Clarence Fountain, a founder of multi-Grammy winning The Blind Boys Of Alabama, has passed at the age of 88.

He died from complications from diabetes, which forced him to stop touring with the band over ten years ago,

The band had a huge following in Australia where it toured frequently.

Fountain died in a hospital in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he had been admitted two days before.

Fountain and friends started their first singing group as students at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Deaf and Blind in Talladega.

Fountain was enrolled there in the boarding school when he was 8.

He was born with sight, but at fur, a caretaker washed his eye out with lye to treat an infection.

Calling themselves The Happy Land Jubilee Singers, they sneaked out of the school at nights singing for soldiers at a nearby training camp.

In 1948 they performed at an event against another group of black singers, which the promoter billed as a battle between the Five Blind Boys of Alabama and the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi.

“The crowd loved us, the name stuck, and things took off for us,” Fountain said.

They stuck defiantly to their gospel roots, turning down a lucrative offer from Ray Charles manager if they expanded to pop and rock, and left their first label Specialty Records when it tried to turn them secular.

Fountain insisted, “I didn’t come here looking for Jesus. I brought him along with me.”

They performed in an award winning gospel musical and won a series of Grammys for their gospel albums – one recorded with Ben Harper.

They also recorded with Lou Reed, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Waits, k.d.lang, Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, Susan Tedeschi, Aaron Neville and Mavis Staples.

Although Fountain stopped touring with the group in 2007, he was on their 2017 album Almost Home when he realised that only he and long time leader Jimmy Carter remained of the original lineup.

The band’s manager Charles Driebe said at the time of its release: “These men were both raised as blind, African American males in the Deep South during the Jim Crow years, and they were sent to a school where the expectation for them was to one day make brooms or mops for a living.

“But they’ve transcended all that. The arc of their lives and of the band reflects the arc of a lot of changes in American society, and we wanted to find a way to capture their experiences in songs.”