{"id":1721,"date":"2008-02-22T13:32:48","date_gmt":"2008-02-22T13:32:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/2008\/02\/blind-boys-of-alabama-go-down.html"},"modified":"2008-02-22T13:32:48","modified_gmt":"2008-02-22T13:32:48","slug":"blind-boys-of-alabama-go-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/02\/blind-boys-of-alabama-go-down.html","title":{"rendered":"Blind Boys of Alabama Go Down to New Orleans"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"BlindBoysIdolChatterPic.jpg\"Spending five decades on the black gospel circuit is called paying your dues, but now that mainstream success has come for the Blind Boys of Alabama, they aren’t thinking about paying themselves back. As they sing in their new CD “Down in New Orleans<\/a>,” “you got to live and give.”
\nThe disc, recorded in New Orleans with local musicians was an attempt to spread their recently abundant wealth where it’s needed most, and remind the rest of us that Katrina is still a daily reality for Louisianans. Oh, and it’s a rare and joyful blend of traditional gospel and New Orleans blues.<\/p>\n


\nIntroduced to rock audiences by Tom Petty in 2001, the Blind Boys have increasingly incorporating tunes by the likes of the Rolling Stones, Ben Harper, and Tom Waits into their recordings. The notion seems to be that they can bring more people to gospel\u2014and the Gospels\u2014by expanding their definition of sacred music.
\nThe new disc continues the expansion with fascinating collaborations with bedrock New Orleans acts like Alain Toussaint and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band. Neither gospellers nor jazzistes<\/i> yield much to the other, letting the pumping rhythm of traditional numbers like “Uncloudy Day” and “I’ll Fly Away,” play interestingly with the punctuated oompah of the Dixie sound. As a celebration of New Orleans, it’s fittingly haunted, as if by the work left to do to bring the city back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spending five decades on the black gospel circuit is called paying your dues, but now that mainstream success has come for the Blind Boys of Alabama, they aren’t thinking about paying themselves back. As they sing in their new CD “Down in New Orleans,” “you got to live and give.” The disc, recorded in New…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":110,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"yoast_head":"\nBlind Boys of Alabama Go Down to New Orleans<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/02\/blind-boys-of-alabama-go-down.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Blind Boys of Alabama Go Down to New Orleans\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Spending five decades on the black gospel circuit is called paying your dues, but now that mainstream success has come for the Blind Boys of Alabama, they aren’t thinking about paying themselves back. As they sing in their new CD “Down in New Orleans,” “you got to live and give.” The disc, recorded in New…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/02\/blind-boys-of-alabama-go-down.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Idol Chatter\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-02-22T13:32:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/BlindBoysIdolChatterPic.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Paul O'Donnell\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Blind Boys of Alabama Go Down to New Orleans","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/02\/blind-boys-of-alabama-go-down.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Blind Boys of Alabama Go Down to New Orleans","og_description":"Spending five decades on the black gospel circuit is called paying your dues, but now that mainstream success has come for the Blind Boys of Alabama, they aren’t thinking about paying themselves back. As they sing in their new CD “Down in New Orleans,” “you got to live and give.” The disc, recorded in New…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/02\/blind-boys-of-alabama-go-down.html","og_site_name":"Idol Chatter","article_published_time":"2008-02-22T13:32:48+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/BlindBoysIdolChatterPic.jpg"}],"author":"Paul O'Donnell","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/02\/blind-boys-of-alabama-go-down.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/02\/blind-boys-of-alabama-go-down.html","name":"Blind Boys of Alabama Go Down to New Orleans","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/02\/blind-boys-of-alabama-go-down.html#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/02\/blind-boys-of-alabama-go-down.html#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/BlindBoysIdolChatterPic.jpg","datePublished":"2008-02-22T13:32:48+00:00","dateModified":"2008-02-22T13:32:48+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/a59300d59ee976fd192c2fce579ee2b9"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/02\/blind-boys-of-alabama-go-down.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/02\/blind-boys-of-alabama-go-down.html"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/02\/blind-boys-of-alabama-go-down.html#primaryimage","url":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/BlindBoysIdolChatterPic.jpg","contentUrl":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/idolchatter\/files\/import\/BlindBoysIdolChatterPic.jpg"},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/2008\/02\/blind-boys-of-alabama-go-down.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Blind Boys of Alabama Go Down to New Orleans"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/","name":"Idol Chatter","description":"Beliefnet Entertainment blog, TV blog, Movie blog, Religion in entertainment blog","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/a59300d59ee976fd192c2fce579ee2b9","name":"Paul O'Donnell","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/bdd\/bdd9d0254f1398197f333149ab55e3f1x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/bdd\/bdd9d0254f1398197f333149ab55e3f1x96.jpg","caption":"Paul O'Donnell"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/author\/podonnell"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/110"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/idolchatter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}