Talk:The Blind Boys of Alabama

"Way Down in the Hole"
"Their rendition of Tom Waits' 'Way Down in the Hole'"? Isn't that backward? Wasn't it the Blind Boys' song first? Josh a brewer (talk) 06:37, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Naw, I just heard Jimmy Carter (the singer, not the president) say on NPR's "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" that it's a Tom Waits song. I imagine there's independent and official confirmation out there too. 11:36AM EST 1MAR08 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.59.113.132 (talk) 16:40, 1 March 2008 (UTC)


 * To set the record straight, Waits wrote the song and recorded it on his 1987 album Franks Wild Years. The Blind Boys didn't record it until 2001 on the Spirit of the Century album.--JayJasper (talk) 18:14, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

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A Commons file used on this page has been nominated for deletion
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 * The Blind Boys of Alabama perform "Free at Last" on Feb 9th 2010 at the White House.webm

Expansion and improvement of article in December 2019
I've done a bit of an overhaul in an attempt to improve this article with cited references.

I've only removed the odd passage that didn't already have a cited refrence from a reliable source, such as the sentence stating that they appeared at the World's Fair in Knoxville in 1982 and 1983 and the fact that a nightclub owner named Victor Brown had helped the group get off of the chitlin' circuit after they appeared in the Gospel at Colonus. While both of these facts were in paragraphs with citations at the end, these facts were not supported by the cited references, and unfortunately I couldn't find supplementary sources for this info.

I removed the "Collaborations" section since it simply contained a list of miscellaneous artists, with no context or cited references provided. I did however include many of these artists in the lead of section and the body of the article with cited references, where appropriate.

While a few news sources have stated that the Blind Boys were invited to/performed at the White House during the Clinton, GWB and Obama administrations, I can't find any evidence that they actually performed at the White House during Clinton's administration -- only that they met him as per Fountain. I searched "Blind Boys of Alabama" on WETA's site and there are no links regarding a performance during the Clinton administration in the search results. I also searched newspaper archives during Clinton's administration. The best I could find was an 2016 interview with Clarence Fountain from Loudersound where they ask about the Blind Boys' performance as part of the "In Performance At The White House: A Celebration Of Music From The Civil Rights Movement" (which was in 2010), to which he responds: "Ill health meant I never made it, but I went to the White House in 1994 at Bill Clinton’s invite. He was nice, but you got to eat before you go to the White House, cos you won’t get offered any food while you are there." Even the 2011 article from Mother Jones states "Bucking partisanship, they’ve performed at both the Bush and Obama White Houses," with no mention of a performance for Clinton. It would be nice to find an official list of all "In Performance at the White House" performances, but I couldn't find one from a governmental site and most sites, such as PBS's site, only list performances from the last 10 years or so.

I also removed the following paragraph from the lead: "The Blind Boys of Alabama sing mainly spiritually uplifting songs, as well as giving encouragement to those with disabilities." It appears to be a bit of editorializing: How does one determine whether their songs are "mainly spiritually uplifting"? I also found several sources to cite for this article and not one of them gave any specific example of them "giving encouragement to those with disabilities." While they certainly set a good example, and do not see their disability as an impediment, and as a result are rightfully respected for it by many of the writers of the cited articles, not one of these writers gave any examples of them "giving encouragement to those with disabilities," or even quoting people with disabilities that cite the group's members as giving them encouragement or inspiration, even though they probably do.

I've left the list of band members pretty much as-is out of good faith and provided birth dates, death dates and dates that they were active as far as I could find. There were however four names for which I could not find any references and while I have left three of them in the "Past members" table with "citation needed" tags, I have removed Lamont Blount's name as it was indicated that he was a band manager in the past, so it didn't seem accurate to list him as a "member" of the group.

I've also left the lengthy discography pretty much as-is as well. Unfortunately I am unaware of a reliable source for music catalogs. I did find some contradictions in release dates from some of the sources I cited, as well as via searches on sites such as Discogs and All Music (which I presume are user-generated just like Wikipedia, but maybe I'm wrong.) Hopefully someone with knowledge of/access to some sort of scholarly database of music would be able to fix that section.

Cheers! Marchije•speak/peek 18:13, 15 December 2019 (UTC)


 * The discography is very incomplete, to say the least. Unfortunately I don't have the expertise to fix it reliably, as you also said. Safulop (talk) 20:36, 12 March 2023 (UTC)