The Five Blind Boys Of Mississippi
Archie Brownlee was one of the greatest hard gospel lead singers of all time. Archie Brownlee could sing sweetly, then suddenly make his voice soar into a piercing scream - he seemed to get more music into a scream than any singer imaginable. The emotional heat from his singing caused many who listened to fall out, perhaps because his spiritual fire was too intense, even for him to contain. He died at the peak of his career on February 8, 1960 at the age of 35.
For his entire career, Archie Brownlee sang with only one group, the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. The group began as a quartet of blind students at the Piney Woods School, not far from Jackson, Mississippi. Piney Woods was one of the pioneering efforts aimed at providing black education, started by Professor Laurence C. Jones at the beginning of the century. In the twenties, Piney Woods began a separate division for teaching blind students. In 1931, six year-old Archie Brownlee joined the school. Soon after, yound Lloyd Woodard, Joseph Ford and Lawrence Abrams joined him. Singing was an important part of the school curriculum as the school already had a strong quartet tradition. Jones following the example of other Black institutions of higher learning like Fisk, Hampton and Tuskegee, decided to put together a group of students to sing and tour to raise money for the school. The group was called the Cotton Blossom Singers and the school kept the various groups of Cotton Blossom Singers on the road for decades.
The group sang around the school before they became the first blind group of Cotton Blossom Singers to tour for the school. They started singing on the campus in 1936 and later caught the attention of Alan Lomax during one of his field recordings for the Library of Congress when the group performed a religious sectionas the "Blind Boys" and three folk songs as "Abraham (sic), Woodard and Patterson" om March 9, 1937. The sound of these recordings offered nothing to suggest what the group would sound like ten years hence.
By 1944 the group decided to go professional, singing pop material for primarily white audiences. They were also performing as as the Jackson Harmoneers, singing almost strictly religious material for black church audiences. Their repertoire and singing style was a mixture of sprituals and jubilee tunes similar to the Golden Gates. Around that time they got another lead singer to work with them, Melvin Henderson and moved the base of the operations to New Orleans. Here they became popular on local programs and began a daily radio program on WWL. They regularly shared programs with the biggest local quartet, the New Orleans Chosen Five also known as Soprocco Singers.
In 1945, Henderson, through his brother got them booked into Chicago at a time when it was a prime qqquartet town. Two quartets were the acknowledged leaders in Chicago at this time. the Blue Jays from Birmingham, Alabama and the Soul Stirrers from Houston, Texas. Both groups had made much use of two lead singers, who would play off each other to build the emotionalism in the song. While it is hard to be certain at this time, the hard gospel sound of the Blind Boys probably came from the influence of hearing the Soul Stirrers and the Bllue Jays as well as the important addition of Percell Perkins on second lead with the departure of Melvin Henderson. Rev. Percell Perkins asserts with some authority that he "made" the sound of the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi. Born in 1917 in Duncan, Mississippi, Percell Perkins grew up in the Mississippi Delta region singing with local groups. He was influenced by the one quartet from the region to record in the early thirties, the Delta Big Four. At the age of 16, Perkins moved to Clarkedale, Mississippi to join one of the legendary groups from the area, the Glorybound Singers. After a few years with them, Perkins went on to join two of the leading quartets at the time: first the Fairfield Four, the best quartet in Nashville and then onto the New Orleans Chosen Five.
The Blind Boys of Mississippi met up with the Chosen Five again during their tenure in Chicago and convinced Perkins to join them as their sighted lead singer, manager and trainer. Perkins brought the group back to New Orleans where they were active in local programs while they began to travel through the country, and it was also about this time that the Five Blind Boys were making contacts that led to their first recording with Excelsior Record Co. In 1948, bass singer Joseph Ford left the group, disenchanted with life on the road. The group replaced him with another blind singer, J.T. Clinkscales. With this line-up of Brownlee, Perkins, Woodard, Abrams and Clinscales, the group continued to travel and record for Peacock Records, a major label based in Houston, Texas. Their first recording session for the Peacock label produced one of the groups biggest hit, "Our Father." It was one of the few gospel records ever to make the Billboard rhythm and blues charts.
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