On June 3, Clarence Fountain, co-founder of the Grammy-winning gospel combo Blind Boys of Alabama, passed away in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. He was 88.

Fountain sang gospel his entire life, from his hometown church in Selma, Alabama to his time at the Alabama Institute for the Negro Deaf and Blind, where he met the rest of his future bandmates.

By the time he was a teenager, Fountain and company were traveling throughout the south, bringing a harder, energetic gospel sound to the pulpit. “You have to feel the spirit deep in your gut,” he once said. “and you have to know how to make someone else feel it.”

In the early ’50s the band had gained the moniker Blind Boys of Alabama, and by the ’60s they were performing alongside Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

“These men were both raised as blind, African American males in the Deep South during the Jim Crow years, and they were sent to a school where the expectation for them was to one day make brooms or mops for a living,” Blind Boys manager Charles Driebe said of Fountain and current bandleader Jimmy Carter. “But they transcended all that. The arc of their lives and of the band reflects the arc of a lot of changes in American society.”

Over the decades Blind Boys of Alabama remained a steady touring act – even gaining acclaim on Brodway for their performance in the Greek tragedy-turned musical Gospel at Colonus in 1983.

Fountain earned his first Grammy in 2001 for “Spirit of the Century,” released on Peter Gabriel’s Real World Record Label, and continued to win Grammys in 2002 for “Higher Ground,” 2003 for “Go Tell It on the Mountain,” and 2004 for “There Will Be a Light” with Ben Harper. Additionally, Fountain and the rest of the Blind Boys of Alabama were awarded the Grammy Lifetime Award in 2009.

Fountain’s final contribution to the group came in 2017, when he sand on their latest LP Almost Home. The album marked his last collaboration with his fellow original member Jimmy Carter.

“​My theory is do something good in the end and that will close out your longevity,” Fountain said recently. “After that, you can go on home and sit down.”

According to a press release, Fountain is survived by his wife, Barbara; funeral arrangements are not complete at this time.

Watch a vintage clip of Fountain and the rest of the Blind Boys of Alabama performing “Too Close to Heaven” below: