The Blind Boys of Alabama have been performing gospel for the better part of the 20th century all the way into the 21st. But this group's status as veteran musicians doesn't keep them from new musical explorations. Far from it: the Blind Boys got their start in the 1940s and '50s singing gospel music on the road, and have brought their rich, layered harmonies into a new century with albums and musical collaborations that meld gospel with influences from blues to rock.

The Blind Boys of Alabama, a five-time Grammy Award-winning group originally formed in the Jim Crow era, will put on a one-night-only concert filled with gospel soul and holiday spirit at Jones Hall on Sunday, December 4. Expect the best of traditional music and some Christmas classics performed in new arrangements, courtesy of Performing Arts Houston.

Blind Boys of Alabama have teamed with Black Violin for “The Message”, an electrifying call-to-action rallying listeners to stay positive and rise above fear mongering, divisiveness and injustice. Over a spirited drum beat, anthemic string arrangement from Black Violin and blistering electric guitar (performed by Marcus King), “The Message” finds the GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award recipients dipping into contemporary instrumentation while reminding us of a classic and timeless truth: “we’re all in this together.”

Eric McKinnie, who is known as Ricky, has been a member of the Blind Boys of Alabama since 1989. But the renowned gospel group launched 50 years before that. Clarence Fountain and his friends at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Blind formed the group in 1939. For more than eight decades, the Blind Boys have persevered and thrived in the music industry. They will perform at the Payomet Performing Arts Center in North Truro on Saturday, Aug. 20.

A decorative Grammy is seen before the start of the 63rd annual Grammy Awards at the Los Angeles Convention Center on Sunday, March 14, 2021.

COLUMBIA, Md., Dec. 16, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- The Foundation Fighting Blindness, the world's leading organization committed to finding treatments and cures for blinding retinal diseases, presents the next installment of their livestream music series, Music to Our Eyes. In partnership with Two Blind Brothers, this Facebook series will feature the Blind Boys of Alabama on Thursday, December 16, 2021, at 8 p.m. ET. This exclusive in-person performance will be from the Buckman Performing and Fine Arts Center in Memphis, Tennessee.

Shoals native Jason Isbell, Mobile’s Walker Hayes and the Blind Boys of Alabama are in the running for Grammys in 2022, along with Mastodon, a metal band that includes Brent Hinds, who’s originally from Pelham.

The Blind Boys of Alabama are recognized worldwide as living legends of gospel music. Celebrated by The National Endowment for the Arts and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences 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.

Singer won five Grammys and received Recording Academy’s lifetime achievement award as leader and co-founder of gospel group

Founding member Jimmy Carter’s tales of the Deep South and the civil-rights fight now form a musical memoir

When you're a group that's performed together for more than seven decades, it might be a daunting task to keep crafting music that feels fresh. No doubt that hill is even harder to climb when you're working within a tradition like gospel, with its well-loved, and well-worn, harmonic and lyrical conventions. Yet the singers who make up Blind Boys of Alabama have always risen to the challenge with utter grace — and the group's forthcoming album, Almost Home, places a capstone on that history.

The album that brought The Blind Boys Of Alabama to the mainstream gets a 15th anniversary reissue with bonus tracks.