He dances his way across the stage, wails and moans into the microphone, races up and down a flight of stairs, leaps high into the air and somehow hits the ground precisely as the orchestra brays the last, exultant chord.
Never mind that gospel legend Clarence Fountain has been blind for most of his 57 years. When Fountain takes over the stage of the Goodman Theatre, where he`s starring in ”The Gospel at Colonus,” it`s spiritual vision that counts.
”As I look back on my life, I`d have to say that being blind has been a big advantage,” said Fountain, lead singer of the Five Blind Boys of Alabama, a group that holds a position in gospel music similar to the Rolling Stones in rock or the Berlin Philharmonic in classical. After 45 long and mostly difficult years spreading the gospel across the U.S. and beyond, Fountain and his Blind Boys have become the classics against which other, newer arrivals are judged.
”When you`re blind, people often look on you as helpless, as if you can`t do anything for yourself,” Fountain said. ”So we had to be not only as good as anyone else, we had to be better, just so they wouldn`t knock us out of the competition. We had to work harder than most folks to get onto this stage.”
Maybe that`s why Fountain and his colleagues generally inspire even buttoned-down audiences to rambunctiously clap their hands and yowl ”amen”
and ”hallelujah.” It takes more than just a sturdy pair of lungs to make gospel music come alive, as Fountain and friends prove nightly in ”Gospel at Colonus,” a show with a deep and fervent religious message.
The musical chronicles the final days of Oedipus, who seeks redemption for his incestuous crimes. Like Fountain, Oedipus has been tragically blinded, which makes Fountain`s performance in the role particularly poignant.
”You have to feel the spirit deep in your gut, and you have to know how to make someone else feel it,” said Fountain, who has learned the hard way.
Born poor in Selma, Ala., Fountain went blind at age 2 from a malady he knows only as ”sore eyes.”
”I only barely remember seeing,” he said, ”so I hardly miss it.”
By the time he was 7, he was enrolled at the Talladega Institute for the Deaf and Blind, near Birmingham.
”I didn`t even know I could sing till I went to that school, which was my first great stroke of luck,” said Fountain, who believes ”the Lord always has shown me the way, which is why I chose to do the Lord`s work.
”It wasn`t too difficult for the teachers to separate those who could sing from those who couldn`t. Then they taught us how to read music by braille, and from there we were on our way.”
When they weren`t studying motets by Monteverdi and choruses by Puccini, Fountain and a few other students tossed aside their braille sheets and began mimicking the new, hard-driving sounds that were galvanizing radio sets across the South. Ground-breaking groups such as the Soul Stirrers, the Dixie Hummingbirds and the Sensational Nightingales were helping to mold the traditional black spiritual into something less rarefied and more fevered.
Suddenly `hot stuff`
By the time Fountain was 14, he and his young pals-all blind, all graced by uncommonly sensitive hearing-formed the Happyland Singers, an amateur gospel group that was so slick in its arrangements and so elegant in its delivery that it was quickly signed for professional tours and radio dates.
Yet even for a brilliant quintet of young singers, times were tough.
”It was bad,” said Fountain, who hastened to add that the group never considered giving up. ”We played for houses of maybe 70, 75 people. No one heard of us, no one knew who we were, hardly anyone cared.
”Then we had a hit record, and suddenly we were hot stuff, playing for audiences of 1,000 or more.”
Wouldn`t desert gospel
The hit record was ”I Can See Everybody`s Mother But Mine,” in the late 1940s.
”So all of a sudden we`re on the upswing, and Ray Charles` manager offers us a big deal to go on tour performing rock, soul, pop-everything, really, but gospel.
”Now you have to remember, this was the same time that (pop great) Sam Cooke was coming up, the same time that Little Richard shook up the music world with `Tutti-Frutti.`
”And everyone was telling us, including Ray Charles` manager, that we could be the next big national group.
”So naturally everyone in the Blind Boys, including our own manager, wanted us to go pop, to go really big time.
”Except me, that is.”
Not only did Fountain refuse to go along with the plan, he takes pride in having prevented anyone else in the group from having sold out as well.
”See, I was head of the Blind Boys, I was the lead singer. And there was no way we were going to go pop or rock. Who needed it? Our bellies were full, we had no headaches, we were happy. At least I was happy singing real gospel music. And anyway, I didn`t want any fancy yachts or big Cadillacs. I guess I didn`t know much back then,” Fountain joked.
So the Blind Boys clung to their gospel roots, and though colleagues such as Andrae Crouch and Mahalia Jackson enjoyed national and international fame, Fountain and the Blind Boys gradually became cult favorites.
”We never really had a chance to be on big national TV shows or anything like that,” Fountain said, ”because I think we were a little too intense for that. So we built our audience the really hard way: night after night, town after town, from one side of the country to the other.”
An unlikely hit
The turning point finally came in 1983, when avant-garde theater director Lee Breuer and composer Bob Telson dreamed up the unlikely idea of a stage musical that expressed Greek tragedy through traditional black music.
”I didn`t think it would sell a ticket,” Fountain said with characteristic candor. ”Guess what? I was wrong. You couldn`t keep audiences away.”
Indeed, ”Gospel at Colonus,” which was launched at Minnesota`s Walker Art Center in a small, one-act show, quickly mushroomed into a full evening`s entertainment that has played cities across America. Fortunately for all involved, Breuer and Telson were wise enough to avoid casting standard Broadway performers, favoring the real thing.
”As far as the acting is concerned, when you`ve been singing gospel music all your life, you sort of learn not to be too shy, so acting wasn`t too tough,” Fountain said.
”And, no, it`s not difficult for me to get around the stage, even though I can`t see anything,” he said, answering the awkward question even before it had been asked. ”It`s really no different than learning your own living room.”
More blessed in Europe
Between runs of ”Gospel at Colonus,” which is scheduled to close at the Goodman Aug. 12, Fountain and his Blind Boys tour the globe.
”We`re on the road about 45 weeks a year, and I suppose we work so hard because we`ve got to eat for 52 weeks a year,” Fountain quipped. ”You don`t get rich singing gospel.
”And frankly, the pay is better in Europe, where they seem to value gospel music more than in the States.
”Back here in the U.S., gospel still hasn`t made the big crossover. The mass audience in America hasn`t figured us out yet, and the big record companies haven`t really taken a chance on us.”
That, it appears, is the Everest that Fountain still hopes to conquer.
”I`ve still got a few tricks up my sleeve; I`m working on some plans to cut a big record deal,” said Fountain, who is unmarried and lives in Detroit, with his sister, when he isn`t on the road. ”But we`re not going to do it by singing some watered down pop music or some raunchy rock `n` roll. That stuff doesn`t last anyway. How many groups from the `40s do you know of that are still around?
”We`re still here, and that ought to tell you something.”
