The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, an American post-war gospel quartet, originated in 1936 at Piney Woods School near Jackson, Mississippi. The group initially consisted of Archie Brownlee, Joseph Ford, Lawrence Abrams, and Lloyd Woodard, who performed as the Cotton Blossom Singers to raise funds for their school. In the mid-1940s, they relocated to Chicago and adopted the name The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi, shifting towards hard gospel under the influence of R.H. Harris. Their breakthrough came with the single "Our Father", which reached number 10 on the Billboard R&B charts in early 1951. Brownlee died in 1960, after which Percell Perkins left to join the ministry. The group continued to tour and record into the 1990s, releasing albums such as The Great Lost Blind Boys Album (1992) and Jesus Is A Rock (1995).
