Living legends of gospel music with acclaimed blues vocalist
The Blind Boys of Alabama are recognized worldwide as living legends of gospel music. Celebrated by The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and The Recording Academy/Grammys with Lifetime Achievement Awards, inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame, and winners of five Grammy Awards, they have attained the highest levels of achievement in a career that spans over 70 years. The Blind Boys are known for crossing multiple musical boundaries, with their remarkable interpretations of everything from traditional gospel favorites to contemporary spiritual material by songwriters such as Eric Clapton, Prince and Tom Waits. They have appeared on recordings with many artists, including Lou Reed, Peter Gabriel, Bonnie Raitt, Willie Nelson, Aaron Neville, Susan Tedeschi, Ben Harper, Patty Griffin and Taj Mahal.
The group released Echoes of the South in 2023, which finds the Gospel Music Hall of Fame inductees coming home to honor those they’ve lost, in a bold declaration of how far they still plan to go. The 11-song collection is a portrait of perseverance from a group well-versed in overcoming incredible odds—from singing for pocket change in the Jim Crow South, to performing for three different American presidents, soundtracking the Civil Rights Movement and helping define modern gospel music as we know it. Recently, their decades-long mission of spreading light and love has taken on an even deeper context, as they’ve reckoned with the loss of two of their own, Paul Beasley and Benjamin Moore, both longtime members of the Blind Boys tight-knit family. Echoes of the South is released in their honor, as well as for the group’s recently retired leader Jimmy Carter, and keeps the Blind Boys’ long-held mission statement at its core: “As long as everybody gives all that they have to give and we sing songs that touch the heart, we’ll live on forever.”
In 2022, their collaborative recording with Béla Fleck was nominated for a Grammy. The nominated collaboration, “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free,” powerfully reimagines the anthem of the Civil Rights Movement originally made famous by Nina Simone. They also have had collaborative recordings and coinciding tours with both Marc Cohn and the afro-pop duo Amadou & Mariam. In 2023, they garnered another Grammy nomination for Best Americana Single for “The Message,” featuring Black Violin. Back again in 2024, Blind Boys garnered three Grammy nominations for their album Echoes of the South. They now have 15 career nominations, which include six total wins with the 2024 Grammy win for Best Roots Gospel Album (Echoes of the South).
Award-winning blues, soul and Americana singer Shemekia Copeland possesses one of the most instantly recognizable and deeply soulful roots music voices of our time. She is beloved worldwide for the fearlessness, honesty and humor of her revelatory music, as well as for delivering each song she performs with unmatched passion. Copeland—winner of the 2021 Blues Music Award for B.B. King Entertainer Of The Year—connects with her audience on an intensely personal level, taking them with her on what The Wall Street Journal calls “a consequential ride” of “bold and timely blues.” NPR Music says Copeland sings with “punchy defiance and potent conviction.” The Houston Chronicle describes her songs as “resilient pleas for a kinder tomorrow.”
On her new Alligator album, Done Come Too Far, Copeland continues the story she began telling on 2018’s groundbreaking America’s Child and 2020’s Grammy-nominated Uncivil War, reflecting her vision of America’s past, present and future. On Done Come Too Far, she delivers her hard-hitting musical truths through her eyes, those of a young American Black woman, a mother and a wife. But she likes to have a good time too, and her music reflects that, at times putting her sly sense of humor front and center.
Copeland has performed thousands of gigs at clubs, festivals and concert halls all over the world, and she has appeared in films, on national television, NPR, and has been the subject of major feature stories in hundreds of magazines, newspapers and internet publications. She’s sung with Bonnie Raitt, Keith Richards, Carlos Santana, Dr. John, James Cotton and many others, and has shared a bill with The Rolling Stones. She entertained U.S. troops in Iraq and Kuwait in 2008, a trip she says, “that opened my eyes to the larger world around me and my place in it.” In 2012, she performed with B.B. King, Mick Jagger, Buddy Guy, Trombone Shorty, Gary Clark, Jr. and others at the White House for President and Mrs. Obama. She has been showcased on PBS’s Austin City Limits and was the subject of a six-minute feature on the PBS News Hour.
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