Nonagenarian Roscoe Robinson has been making music longer than most people have been alive. Singing in the church since he was a child, Roscoe began making a name for himself in the ‘50s performing in gospel quartets like the Highway QCs, the Blind Boys of Alabama, and the Blind Boys of Mississippi. In the mid-sixties, he released several of his own singles including “That’s Enough,” which went to #7 on the R&B chart. But to Roscoe, the highpoint of his career was performing in Harlem in 1961 as part of an all-star gospel revue.
Roscoe Robinson: We were in the Apollo Theater, the Blind Boys of Mississippi, Swan Silvertone Singers, the Staple Singers, Highway QCs. We had the biggest crowd that had ever been in the Apollo Theater. We had people trying to come in a block and a half from the theater. We were bigger, had a bigger show than James Brown or anybody you could name. But they never gave us credit.
RR: I was born in a small town called Dermott, Arkansas. Church life has always been a part of my life, and my father was a Baptist preacher. I would go to different churches with him. People would receive the spirit and rejoice from it. They would dance and shout and whatever but back in that day before they allowed us to bring instruments into the churches, how you kept the time was you patted your hip and stomped your feet. You didn’t have no drums.
Nick Spitzer: So you pretty much had to rely on your voice.
RR: That’s right.
NS: When is it that you kind of break out of just singing in the local church and your family and start going out and being known as somebody who is a professional gospel singer?
RR: In Arkansas, my father had passed from pneumonia, and my sister moved to Chicago. She sent for me and my mother to come live with her, and I started singing-
NS: You were a young fella at that time.
RR: Yeah about 15, 16, somewhere around there. The first group I sung with was a group called the Kelly Brothers. We used to have a song with the Staple Singers. Mavis Staples was singing bass.
NS: You worked with a number of the famous blind ensembles, you worked with the Blind Boys of Alabama and the Blind Boys of Mississippi. How was it working with a blind group as far as traveling and staying in places? Did you play a role just trying to help everybody get where they needed to be?
RR: I had to take them to eat and the men’s room in different places. That was during the time when we had the integrational problem, you know what I’m saying. We had to go in the back doors and back rooms and stuff. It was kind of rough. Blind Boys of Mississippi, we were in Florida, and we ran out of gas. We went down to the service station, and we told him we wanted to get us a couple of gallons of gas, and he told me he was just out. But the car was steady filling up. So on the way back, we passed by this white fella, he was over in his yard. He said, “Did the man sell y’all any gas down there?” I said, “No he didn’t.” He said, “Come over here.” He took a siphon and siphoned gas out of that tractor he was working on, and gave us two gallons of gas. Didn’t even charge us. So that showed that everybody wasn’t bad back in those days, you know.
To hear the full program, tune in Saturdays at 7 and Sundays at 6 on WWNO, or listen at americanroutes.org.