Staple Singers march back into spotlight
Hallelujah! Some of the seminal musical voices of the civil rights movement are enjoying a revival in advance of this month's 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s protest marches from Selma, Ala., to Montgomery.
The Staple Singers, whose gospel-folk performances at rallies, church services and MLK speeches preceded their '70s crossover hits, and their leader, the late Roebuck "Pops'' Staples, both are featured on new historical albums. And lead singer Mavis Staples is the subject of the documentary Mavis!, which has its world premiere at next weeks SXSW festival in Austin.
On Tuesday, Sony will release a complete version of a church service featuring the Staple Singers recorded just after the 1965 Selma marches and released on LP in in their wake. Freedom Highway Complete: Live at Chicago's New Nazareth Church, captures a service at a Baptist parish near their home on April 9, during which the group sang traditional gospel tunes, including We Shall Overcome, Take My Hand Precious Lord and When the Saints Go Marching In, and their newly composed song about the marches, Freedom Highway.
The original album, produced by Billy Sherrill and with different sequencing and an edited song list, has been out of print for years. The restored version adds three never-released songs (Jesus Is All, Samson and Delilah and View the Holy City) as well as spoken interludes from Pops and the Rev. John E. Hopkins.
The message from Pops and his children Pervis, Cleotha, Yvonne and Mavis is just as powerful and relevant today as it was then, says Nedra Olds-Neal, who produced the expanded album with Steve Berkowitz for Sony's Legacy label. "A lot of the time they used music to motivate people, and to give them the inspiration and hope that would just keep them going. That's how the Staples' music functioned.''
Lead singer Mavis, who was 25 at the time of the recording, says the family was involved in the civil-rights movement but wasn't in Selma because they were touring Europe. "But knowing everything that happened in Selma, the plan was to make a live album … of us singing freedom and protest songs. Freedom Highway was about the march, and I still sing it today. We still feel like our work has not been finished.''
Mavis says the family didn't meet King until the early '60s, when they visited his church. But "when we heard his message that Sunday morning, Pops said, 'I like this man, and if he can preach it, we can sing it.' My father was very close to him, but we girls had less of a conversation with him. But he was a great man, and I hold onto his laughter. He either looked very serious or worried, but when I'd hear him laugh, I'd feel good.''
A deeper exploration of Pops' influential guitar-playing and singing (the Singers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999) is found on the just-released Don't LoseThis, a collection of songs from his final recording sessions done in the months before his death in 2000.
The sessions initially were intended for a Staple Singers farewell album, but a Pops solo album emerged instead. It was never fully produced, however, and remained in Mavis' care for 15 years. She says the title comes from her father's instructions to her when he gave her the tapes in the months before his death.
"When Pops recorded, he was not well,'' says Mavis, 75. "We'd go to the studio and sometimes he would have to lie on the couch because he wasn't feeling good. But we'd lay this stuff (music) down, and sometimes Pops would leave some empty spaces.''
Mavis, whose solo career had been boosted in 2010 when Wilco's Jeff Tweedy produced her Grammy-winning You Are Not Alone album, turned to her friend and fellow Chicagoan again for help with this project. It's intended to honor the centennial of Pops' birth (Dec. 28, 1914). Tweedy took the songs — a spare collection that features Pops' distinctive guitar playing, plus backing vocals from his daughters and a duet with Mavis — and added a little of his own guitar and bass, and drums from his son Spencer.
A live recording of the family singing Will the Circle Be Unbroken — "the first song he taught us,'' says Mavis — concludes the album.
The result is "one of the highlights of my life,'' says Tweedy. "I feel like it's the best thing I've ever been a part of. It's something you can't really think about when you're working on it because it would be stifling to feel the entire weight of something I truly believe is historic. Pops and Mavis and the Staples family have been an inspiration to me for a long, long time, and I don't take it for granted that I've been blessed to be invited into their world. ''
Mavis, who says she's become something of a grandmother to the Tweedy family, returns the compliment: "I couldn't be more pleased with how Tweedy has finished it off. I knew I didn't have anything to worry about. ''
. Director Jessica Edwards' Mavis! documentary, which gets its first airing March 15 at SXSW, features live performances, archival footage and conversations with musical artists including Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Levon Helm and Chuck D. The film follows her from her days with the Staple Singers through her solo career to the current Tweedy projects.