MUSIC
Blind Boys of Alabama drummer calls Kirkwood home
Eric ‘Ricky’ McKinnie joined legendary gospel group in 1990
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, December 14, 2008
He’s blind, but he’s not from Alabama.
He’s from here. Grew up in the house next door to the one he lives in now, in southeast Atlanta, almost within sniffing distance of the “ghetto burgers” at Ann’s Snack Shop.
Hyosub Shin/Staff Photographer
Ricky McKinnie, 56, who first had vision problems as a child and lost his sight as a young man, has been performing since 1990 with the legendary Grammy-winning group the Blind Boys of Alabama, which was started by youths at a school for the disabled in 1939.
SHANNON BRINKMAN
Blind Boys of Alabama members Ricky McKinnie (from left), Bobby Butler, Jimmy Carter, Ben Moore, Joey Williams and Billy Bowers are shown.
Hyosub Shin/Staff Photographer
Ricky McKinnie has been a drummer with the Blind Boys of Alabama for nearly two decades. While he makes his home in Atlanta, McKinnie is on the road for more than 200 dates a year.
His mother still lives there. Still remembers how as a kid he’d park himself beside the family stereo and play along to records for hours on his drum set.
“He would get by that stereo and I’d say, ‘Ricky, would you please stop!’ ” his mother, Sarah McKinnie Shivers, recalled. “And he’d say, ‘Mama, you’re not going to say that when I grow up and get famous.’ And I’d say, ‘Don’t you wanna go outside?’ “
She laughs now. Her son, who had his first eye operation at 7 and went completely blind at 23, did just what he said he’d do: Since 1990, Eric “Ricky” McKinnie has played drums for the legendary Blind Boys of Alabama.
Started in 1939 by a group of kids at the Alabama School for the Negro Deaf and Blind, in Talladega, the gospel group won four Grammys in a row from 2002 to 2005. Their latest CD, “Down in New Orleans,” was nominated this month for another.
They’ve toured all over the world, with a fan base that ranges from churchgoing traditionalists to secular hipsters. They’ve been inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame and performed or recorded with musicians as various as Peter Gabriel, Bonnie Raitt, Lou Reed, John Legend and Prince. At the 2004 Grammys, they sang with Kanye West.
The Blind Boys return from a concert tour through Monaco, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and England to perform Friday in Atlanta at Symphony Hall.
“I’ve been blessed to play in most of the places I dreamed of going to,” Mc-Kinnie, 56, said from his house on a leafy street of modest homes in Kirkwood. “Every day it unfolds a little better.”
Not defined by blindness
He sports a white goatee, a hepcat patois (favorite descriptor: “cool”), some sweet bling (Versace sunglasses, Versace bracelet, Versace ring), a watch that talks, and what seems like a CD’s worth of ringtones, from James Brown’s “I’m Black and I’m Proud” to Andy Williams’ “Moon River.”
He’s on the road for more than 200 dates a year, but when he’s home, he’s a homebody. He built a studio in the back of his house for his company, Quality Sound Management. He has another office and an assistant to help with matters related to the Blind Boys, for whom he is road business manager.
He eats dinner most nights at his mother’s, calls taxis to take him to the airport when he’s tired of waiting for somebody to drive him and navigates everywhere without a cane.
“I never have taken to the idea that I’m blind,” he said. “I do pretty much all the things I want to do.
“I lost my sight,” he added, “but not my direction.”
‘Hey, man, I can’t see’
McKinnie developed cataracts at 7.
“I remember standing out in Carver Homes [the public housing project where Mc-Kinnie lived then], walking in the yard, and all of a sudden everything got blurry,” he said. “I walked into a clothesline pole. My brother ran out and said, ‘What’s wrong?’ I said, ‘Hey, man. I can’t see.’ “
His mother understood. She had her first cataract operation at 10. She still has cataracts but can see.
“I would carry him back and forth to hospitals and doctors,” she recalled. “I hated it — you hate anything to be wrong with your children — but I didn’t worry about him too much. He’s always been so self-reliant.”
Added McKinnie’s younger sister, Janice Shivers, “Our mother always told us to look out for him, and that’s what we did. But he learned to go on. He was always in a band, always in a church choir, in talent shows at Murphy High [now Crim].”
McKinnie’s household was musical — his mother performed with gospel groups professionally — and by 12 he sometimes worked two gigs a night, playing gospel, blues, rhythm and blues.
He was voted “most talented” in high school and went on to DeKalb College (now Georgia Perimeter College). He played in the orchestra, planned to be a social worker.
Two years later, while convalescing from glaucoma surgery, he got a call from the Gospel Keynotes, a Texas band that asked him to join them on the road. He did. But after playing a gig one night in Fort Wayne, Ind., in 1975, McKinnie went to a club to hear another band play.
“All of a sudden, things got dark,” he said. “I said, ‘It’ll get OK in the morning.’ But it never did.”
McKinnie still didn’t believe he was blind. He sometimes experiences what he calls “phantom sight,” believing he still sees things.
“For years, the doctor would tell me I’m blind. And I’d say, ‘No, man. Every day I go into the bathroom, I can see my hands.’ He’d say, ‘No, Ricky, you’re blind.’ “
McKinnie then started the Ricky McKinnie Singers with his mother, and during breaks sometimes joined the Blind Boys to sing background.
His mother knew original frontman Clarence Fountain from playing at the same shows, and McKinnie says the group was “an inspiration to me even before I lost my sight.”
“I had great admiration for Clarence,” he added. “He didn’t let his being without sight stop him from being who he is.”
Fountain asked McKinnie around 1990 to join the group’s tour in Australia. McKinnie’s response: “Cool.” He needed money to fix a van, so he told his mother he’d play a few dates, then come home and rejoin his own group.
“Then I went out with Clarence,” he said, “and I haven’t been back.”
Carrying on the legacy
Most of the group’s original members were still around when McKinnie arrived. He was a generation younger but had no trouble being accepted.
“He fit us perfectly,” said Jimmy Carter, 76, the Blind Boys’ lead vocalist since Fountain quit touring two years ago for health reasons. “There’s a certain thing a drummer has to have to fit with us, and he seems to have it. It’s just a feeling he has.”
McKinnie also taught the other members a few things about being blind. Most of them were never able to see and grew up in an era, he said, “when people thought the main thing people without sight could do is work in a factory making mops and cane chairs.”
He showed some of them how to set a watch, hang clothes, make a bed — “simple things,” he said, “people take for granted.”
But for McKinnie, his experiences with the Blind Boys — his reaction to playing with Prince: “Real cool” — are “a dream come true.”
He understands the group’s history and significance.
“The legacy of the Blind Boys is to let people know it’s not about what you can’t do, it’s about what you can do,” he said.
He also understands his role in continuing that legacy, as original members die or retire, and sighted members join (three of the group’s seven members can see).
“As long there are blind singers, there will always be the Blind Boys,” he said. “It’s not just a name. You can have different people in the Four Tops or the Temptations or the Spinners. They’re just singers.
“But when there’s no blind singers, there will be no Blind Boys.”
The Origins
Jimmy Carter, 76, is the only Blind Boy of Alabama still touring who sang with the original members at the Talladega, Ala., school where the group began. Longtime frontman Clarence Fountain no longer tours for health reasons, and Johnny Fields retired about 10 years ago. The others have died. We caught up with Carter at home between tours. He grew up in Birmingham, where his 103-year-old mother still lives, but he moved a while ago to Montgomery.
“Got a girl here,” he explained.
Q: How far away does the Alabama School for the Negro Deaf and Blind seem now?
A: I went up there when I was 7, with my mom. I’ll never forget the day — a Wednesday afternoon. Now picture this: a little guy, 7 years old, didn’t know anybody, can’t see, and she put me out there and walked away. That seemed like the end of the world to me. But it was the best thing that ever happened.
Q: Good memories?
A: Some good, some bad. I wouldn’t want to go through it again.
Q: And you sang there with the kids who became the Blind Boys of Alabama.
A: I started singing with them in school. Then they decided to get out on the road in ‘44. My mom wouldn’t let me go. She said I was too young. I was about 12.
Q: How’d you get back together?
A: That’s a long, long story.
Q: Short version?
A: Some years later the Blind Boys of Mississippi called and asked me to go on the road with them. Both the Blind Boys of Alabama and the Blind Boys of Mississippi were very popular. We did a lot of touring. Then I got the chance to get back with the Blind Boys of Alabama [in the late ’70s], and I did.
Q: Then one day the Blind Boys went from playing the black gospel circuit to playing with people like Peter Gabriel and Prince.
A: We never had any idea it would come to what it’s come to. I thank God for it, and better late than never.
Q: Three guys in the group can see. Any division between those who see and those who can’t?
A: To be a Blind Boy, you have to be able to perform and sing. And if you’re a sighted guy, you have to be willing to look out for the blind boys, too. If you can’t do that, you can’t come with us. But we have enough blind people — we don’t need any more blind folk.
Q: How long can the Blind Boys go on?
A: I have three blind men behind me and I would hope they’d take the group and go on. I’m grooming them. I’m out front now, but when I can’t get out front, I hope somebody will come up and take my place. Nobody’s indispensable. I’ve found that out.
