Still going strong into his 70s, Clarence Fountain of the Blind Boys of Alabama talks to Jim Carroll about Malcolm X, doing the Lord's work and the popsters jumping on the gospel wagon

When Clarence Fountain says that he knows a lot about the long road, it's no exaggeration. Since the late 1930s, he and his fellow Blind Boys of Alabama have been singing, praising and hollering for the Lord in churches, halls, clubs, rooms and arenas all around the world. In the last couple of years, thanks to Peter Gabriel's Real World label, the Blind Boys have also been producing and releasing records every jot as euphoric and uplifting as those acclaimed live performances - where even non-believers find themselves on their knees giving thanks for what they've experienced.

Such attention - Grammy awards, sell-out shows and critical praise - may have arrived relatively late in life, but you won't hear any complaints from Fountain or fellow founding members, Jimmy Carter and George Scott.

Seventy-somethings they may be, yet the energy, commitment and enthusiasm they show belies both their age and stature as gospel's elder statesmen. The group who trooped out of the Alabama Institute for the Blind all those years ago have outlasted, out-sung and out-preached many, many contemporaries.

The preaching certainly hasn't ceased for Fountain. To talk to him is to encounter a man totally at ease with talking about, for and with the Lord because he has been doing it all his life and, indeed, his father was doing it before him. What he has to say may come across on occasions as somewhat homespun or folksy but there's no doubting the sincerity behind it. "I've always been able to get along with the Lord," he says simply. "I don't have no problem with him and I hope he has no problem with me."

Doing the Lord's work has steered the Blind Boys away from any possible conflict which may have arisen by mixing the sacred with the secular. While gospel stars such as Al Green and Sam Cooke put on pop threads, Fountain and the Blind Boys resisted any such temptation.

"I never considered it," he says emphatically. "This is gospel, this is what we do and we're going to stay gospel. When you cross over, it becomes about cash money. You're working for money but I work for the Lord because I know I'll get paid. Yes, we had chances to sing rock 'n' roll but money was never our priority. I wouldn't change my way of thinking or my way of doing for anyone. The Lord has looked after me, of that I'm certain, and if I can lead some people to him by what I sing or what I say on stage then that's good. Our thing has always been to take the message and let people know that there's a reality in God. We've outlasted a lot of groups and I'm not tired but I've had my run and it's time for someone else to take up the baton and keep on going. I'm glad I've run as long as I have because it's been good for me but I'm willing to go a little further."

Surviving those years has not been easy. While Fountain is largely positive ("I remember that the early days weren't easy, but that always stands out when you're looking back and remembering how things used to be. Most times, things get better rather than get worse"), he does recall encountering difficulties in the fiery US of the 1950s and 1960s. Touring the south in those days as a black gospel group was certainly trying: "It would have intimidated anybody. You have to go along with the programme because you can't change nothing by yourself, it takes a whole nation, a whole lot of people to change things".

When Black leaders came along, Fountain approved. "I met both Malcolm X and Martin Luther King at different times. I knew they were doing a good thing, they were doing what they thought was right, they had that belief in what they were doing. Now I might not have been able to do anything but I was there, I knew what they were doing."

Recent recognition of the Blind Boys' legacy and work has coincided with a huge growth and interest in contemporary gospel and not just by way of Moby's purloining of gospel samples for his Play album.

Acts such as Mary Mary have found their way into the charts by talking about the Lord while Destiny's Child Michelle Williams's début album had more than a pinch of gospel to it.

Fountain has somewhat mixed views about the new breed. "Some of it is gospel and some of it, well, I don't think much of it but at least they're singing about the Lord and talking about God. Mary Mary and them are singing songs which have got the wrong beat and I can deal with that but it's not what I would want to do."

Interestingly, the last two albums from the Blind Boys have been chocabloc with both contemporary songs and players. Their latest, Higher Ground, features cover versions of songs by Stevie Wonder, Curtis Mayfield, Jimmy Cliff and Prince and guest turns from Ben Harper and Robert Randolph. "The producers (John Chelew and Chris Goldsmith) brought those songs to us and we decided which ones to sing. We take a song and make it feel like a gospel song.

"We're not singing about 'baby come home' or 'honey I love you' or any of that old blues stuff, our songs are ones you can sing in church or out of church. When you hear a song, you can tell how you can make it into gospel, you can tell how you're going to put your spirit into it. The gospel flavour always comes first."

This outlook also extends to their live shows which may account for the grins and hosannas in the audience which close any Blind Boys' show.

"We've always taken music and put our perspective on it. We're making gospel tunes out of music that's not ordinarily viewed as gospel. We've always went out on a limb on certain things that other people would have avoided, but we think we're doing the right thing. We want to make people have a good time when they come to our shows.

"But we also want them to think about something that they might not have thought about before and feel something they might never have felt before. That's how we do the Lord's work."

The Blind Boys Of Alabama play Vicar Street, Dublin on October 23rd and 24th and the Opera House, Cork on October 25th.

Higher Ground is on Real World