Jesus Boogaloo
Photo by Oscar Zagal
By Ron Garmon
Opinions diverge as to the sight Walt Disney Concert Hall presents to the unwary. Frank Gehry’s controversial design always reminded me of a beer can mugged by an M-80, and so it’s taken on a subjective patina of punk over time. The peerless acoustics are anything but DIY, however, and the venue’s sense of warm, friendly vastness subtly amplifies the great occasions presented there, like the gladsome revival meeting the Blind Boys of Alabama staged last Monday (December 17).
Clarence Fountain and Jimmy Carter are the surviving founding members of a vocal group formed in 1937 at the Alabama Home for the Negro Blind. Under a variety of names, this act toured the South for decades, recording for minor record labels, surviving on the gospel circuit, and influencing the likes of Marvin Gaye. They became known to a wider public after appearing in the 1983 Broadway smash The Gospel at Colonus. The mainstream took them up, and their albums began collecting Grammys. Fountain no longer tours with the band for health reasons, but Carter’s still-mighty voice is augmented by power-baritone Bishop Billy Bowers, soul shouter Ben Moore, and a quartet of musicians. The three vocalists and drummer Ricky McKinnie are blind.
On Monday, the seven of them, dressed all in red, entered clutched together and tottering, moving to the stage with slow care amid the explosive applause. Carter, elderly and elfin, grinned at the already noisy crowd packed to the nosebleed rim of the place and cooed: “We don’t like a con-ser-a-tive crowd.” The audience erupted again, and the Boys leaned into “Christmas Get Me Through Another Day,” with the singers scooping bluesy desolation out of thin air and Bishop Bowers thundering like the O’Jays’ Eddie Levert in his early-’70s prime. This was followed by a slow-funk variation on “Go Tell It On the Mountain,” in the slick and swampy manner of the Meters.
The Boys gave traditional gospel and Yuletide tunes the jeweled shimmer they bring to everything they touch, even such weird dada as Norman Greenbaum’s 1971 Jesus People satire “Spirit in the Sky.” The Boys lent this unlikely FM standard a sheen that completely subverted the original’s hippie iconoclasm.
“Silent Night” gently intensified the mood, imparting mellowness that rose by metronomic degrees to a celestial finish leading into “Amazing Grace.” First appearing on 2001’s Spirit of the Century album, this audience favorite sets the transformative gratitude of the words to the tune of fleshpot-blues masterpiece “House of the Rising Sun.” Looking about, I saw rows of transfixed people, all looking as whore-in-church spine-chilled as I was. “People Get Ready” came next, propelling Disney Hall into revival mode and Carter from his seat like a boy preacher imbued with the Spirit. Rhythm guitarist Joey Williams walked the spry vocalist into the lower aisles as he mellifluously shouted and bawled. The rest of the show was an ecstatic blur, climaxing with the hallelujah footstomp of “I’m a Soldier in the Army of the Lord,” which had Bowers roaring like the sergeant-major of a sanctified Host.
Carter bade us goodbye, the Boys clasped hands on shoulders and wobbled off in formation. Shortly after, Carter and the musicians came back for one encore, a restrained version of the wistful World War II-era pop classic “(There’ll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover,” which he dedicated to U.S. servicefolk.
Published: 12/20/2007
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