Blind Boys of Alabama on Christmas Music (Remixed)

I think of this episode of Twelve Songs as a remix, a second pass
at the same material with very different results. 


In 2003, The Blind Boys of Alabama recorded Go Tell it on
the Mountain, an album of gospel and gospel-inflected Christmas
music that Omnivore Recordings reissued in 2016. Last season, I
talked to the Blind Boys' guitarist and musical director Joey
Williams about the project and how the gospel legends interacted
with the musical guests brought in for the album, including Mavis
Staples, Tom Waits, and Solomon Burke. He could answer some of
those questions, but since some recorded their parts separately
including Waits and Chrissie Hynde, there were parts of the story
that he couldn't tell. 


That episode is online now, but during the year I found an
interview that I had forgotten about with the album's producer,
John Chelew, when the album was released. Since he was a part of
those sessions, he could tell stories about Waits, Chrissie
Hynde, and George Clinton and the curveballs they threw the
group. 


With that in mind, I reconstructed this episode. I let the Chelew
tape present a new side to the story of Go Tell it on the
Mountain, and I went back to Williams to talk about a second
Christmas album that the Blind Boys did, Talkin'
Christmas from 2014 in collaboration with Taj Mahal. 


The audio of the Chelew recording is not up to my usual standards
for the show, but when we talked I didn't have a podcast or audio
use for the interview in mind. It's the quality I could get from
a phone, and I wish I could have talked to Chelew again to get
better audio but he died in 2016. I got used to it very quickly
and didn't find it off-putting, and I hope that will be your
experience as well.