Blind Boys of Alabama

For two years running, the Blind Boys of Alabama have scooped up well-deserved Best Traditional Soul Gospel Album Grammys. In the convoluted world of statuettes, that's the only appropriate description out there. Sixty years after their young beginnings at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind, founding members Clarence Fountain, George Scott and Jimmy Carter are now schooling folks such as Ben Harper and Robert Randolph, when they aren't finding traditional gospel in Tom Waits and Funkadelic. Nowadays, the Boys collect accolades and sing in the sort of velvet-curtained halls that inspire little bip-bip-bip claps of reverence rather than full-throated howls of the spirit. No matter -- for one winter night, they'll be building a new church in River City.