Mavis Staples
You can’t go much deeper than Mavis Staples. Lead vocalist
for The Staple Singers for more than 40 years, her [contralto]
voice is a mighty force of nature and an instrument of social change;
as deep as the Mississippi itself – and carrying nearly as much
history.
According to Mavis, The Staples’ music went through three distinct phases. From their gospel beginnings, when they were known as “God’s Biggest Hit Makers,” to their Civil Rights “protest” era (marching and singing shoulder to shouler with the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.) to their of deep-groove, R&B hits in the ‘70s (“Respect Yourself,” "Reach Out, Touch a Hand," "I'll Take You There"). These days, when Mavis sings, it’s impossible to tell where gospel leaves off and the secular begins. But when “Respect Yourself” was first released in 1972, gospel purists were scandalized that their beloved Staples were singing the “devil’s music.” “The devil doesn't have any music,” Mavis protests today, still indignant at the suggestion more than thirty years later. “All of our music is healing music.”
Mavis’s father, Roebuck “Pops” Staples, was the patriarch and guiding spirit of The Staple Singers. Born 1914 in Winona, Mississippi, Pops grew up picking cotton on the fabled Dockery Farms plantation – the home or stopping-off place for a virtual honor roll of some of the greatest blues musicians who ever lived: Son House, Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and the man who taught Pops to play guitar, Charley Patton – the father of the Delta Blues himself. You can make a good argument that all the music that became what we now know as pop, soul, rock ‘n’ roll, country and western, rhythm and blues – even hip-hop – can be traced back to Pops Staples’ boyhood home. Beyond that, the trail goes cold, dissolving into a vanished time of ghost stories, flood waters, moonlit crossroads, and Biblical marvels. But, Mavis – she can take you there.