The Five Blind Boys of Mississippi was an American gospel group. Powered by lead singer Archie Brownlee, their single "Our Father" reached the Billboard Rhythm & Blues charts in the early 1950s, one of the first gospel records to do so. The group originated in 1936 as a quartet of students from the Piney Woods School for the blind near Jackson, Mississippi. The students — Brownlee, Joseph Ford, Lawrence Abrams, and Lloyd Woodard — originally sang under the name "the Cotton Blossom Singers"