SPIRIT OF THE CENTURY

A history of a group of visually impaired Black gospel musicians who achieved unprecedented fame.

In the 1930s, the Alabama School for the Negro Deaf and Blind took in visually impaired boys from all over the state of Alabama and taught them “commercial broom and mop manufacturing and music.” The school’s conditions were abysmal: Students routinely went hungry, and the abusive staff and “blood feud” between blind and deaf pupils often exposed attendees to violence. The one bright spot in the school was the music—in particular, one group that students formed themselves. In the 1940s, a partially sighted student named Velma Traylor got his friends J.T. Hutton, Olice Thomas, George Scott, Clarence Fountain, and Johnny Fields to form a group that sang four-part quartet harmonies that they arranged themselves. Originally called the Happy Land Jubilee Singers, these boys would soon become the famous gospel quartet group known as the Blind Boys of Alabama. Although Traylor was shot and killed tragically—and mysteriously—at the age of 23, the Blind Boys continued performing for decades, winning multiple Grammy Awards, recording the theme song for The Wire, performing on David Letterman, sharing the stage with Prince, and singing for President Barack Obama. At its best, this book, co-written by music journalist Lauterbach, author of Beale Street Dynasty and The Chitlin’ Circuit, provides an intimate look at the creative, personal, and professional lives of visually impaired Black musicians over a decades-long career. However, the narrative’s lightning-fast pace makes it difficult to keep track of the huge variety of characters in the Blind Boys’ orbit, and the incredibly detailed timeline is difficult to follow. Consequently, the book feels more like a list of people and events than a story.

A thorough but frantically paced history of the Blind Boys of Alabama.