The Blind Boys Of Alabama in Portsmouth

The Blind Boys of Alabama are an American gospel group formed in Talladega in 1939 by students at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Deaf and Blind. Their music draws on traditional gospel, blues and soul; key recordings include their adaptation of “Amazing Grace,” sung to the melody associated with “The House of the Rising Sun,” and the albums Spirit of the Century and Higher Ground. In 1983, the group appeared in the premiere of The Gospel at Colonus at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the production later brought them to Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre. After recording There Will Be a Light with Ben Harper in 2004, the two acts toured together, and the concert album Live at the Apollo documented their partnership in New York.