Soothing the soul

With new CD, Mavis Staples continues her mission of renewal

By JONATHAN TAKIFF

takiffj@phillynews.com


WHATEVER ails ya - mentally or spiritually - Mavis Staples can heal it.

For more than 50 years, mostly as lead voice of the famed Staple Singers, Staples has been applying her distinctively earthy, confident voice to warm, Delta-flavored blues-gospel anthems of uplift and rejuvenation. Best known of the bunch are songs like "I'll Take You There," "If You're Ready (Come Go With Me)" and "Respect Yourself," true 20th-century classics.

And even though she has gone through some personal travails of her own in recent years - including the death of her beloved father, Roebuck "Pops" Staples at the end of 2000, and her sister Cleo's diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease - Mavis Staples remains resolutely positive and committed to bettering the world through song.

A perfect case in point is her extraordinary new solo album, "Have a Little Faith," a set of good-time, down-home, gospel-fired numbers that Staples will feature in live performance tonight at TLA with her band.

While gently updated in its production sound, "Have a Little Faith" remains steadfast and true to the traditions of the Staple Singers, including the piercing, peeling, Pops-style electric guitar work, the sweetly surging Hammond organ lines and the frisky, "Sunday morning," hand-clapping percussion.

Staples didn't write the music on the album. But songwriters - including Jim Tullio (a sometime collaborator with Richie Havens and latter-day member of the Band), Philly notable Phil Roy and LeRoy Marinell (co-writer of Warren Zevon tunes) - have marvelously captured the Staples essence with songs espousing the power of positive thinking.

At turns she's celebrating the commonality of all human beings ("At The End of the Day,") acknowledging the blessings we share ("I Wanna Thank You") and the omnipotence of the Lord ("God Is Not Sleeping").

On "There's a Devil on the Loose," she warns of the dangers lurking at our doorstep:

"Boys are running with the guns/Girls having babies too young."

But really summing up where Staples is coming from is the biographical "Pops' Recipe," which recalls her dad's roots as a 10-cents-a-day cotton picker on a Mississippi plantation, and his steadfast aim as an entertainer to better the world with good news and good example.

As the chorus spells it out: "He said...accept responsibility/Don't forget humility/At every opportunity/Serve your artistry/Don't subscribe to bigotry, hypocrisy, duplicity/Respect humanity/That's Pops' recipe."

SUBHED HERE: Lifting their voices

"Pops taught us to be a family unit - close and strong," reflected the 64-year-old Staples in a recent chat from her Chicago home. "As a sort of parable, he'd wrap 14 pencils together and show how strong they were, how you couldn't break them. Then he'd pull out one pencil and show how easy it was to break. He'd say 'This is what happens when you stray from the family. This is why you've got to stick together.' "

The elder Staples pushed books like "The Art of Thinking Big" and entertainer Sammy Davis Jr.'s autobiography, "Yes I Can," on the family - which included Pops' wife, Ocela, Mavis' brother Pervis (who left the group in 1971), and sisters Cleo and Yvonne.

"We didn't realize, didn't appreciate how close we were until we went out on the road, performing together, and other young people would say to me, 'How can you stand to be around your sisters all the time?' " Staples recalled. "We didn't realize we were supposed to be fighting with one another."

The first song the Staples family ever learned to sing together turned out to be prophetic - "Will the Circle Be Unbroken."

"We weren't looking for a career. Pops had been singing with the Trumpet Jubilee, a vocal group like the Dixie Hummingbirds and Blind Boys of Alabama, but some of those guys weren't good about showing up for rehearsal. One day Pops came home disgusted, went into the closet to get out his little pawn shop guitar, sat us down and said 'From now on, I'm going to sing with my children,' " Staples said.

"We went to my Aunt Katie's church that Sunday, got up to sing [with the tiny but big-voiced, 9-year-old Staples standing on a chair], and people clapped us back three times. We had to do that song three times, 'cause it was the only one we knew."

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SUBHED HERE: Opening for Martin

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The Staples would go on to record "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" "at least seven or eight times." A new version appears, symbolically, as the closing cut on Staples' new album.

Five years after their debut, the family group cut their first hit record in 1955 for VeeJay, "Uncloudy Day." Despite its pure country gospel qualities, the disc sold like an R&B record, and the Staple Singers (dropping the last "s" on Staples for easier pronunciation) were on their way.

It wasn't long before they had their own Chicago radio show, were opening for Sister Mahalia Jackson (Staples' role model) and then regularly selling out 10,000-seat arenas, especially in the South, as the headliner on multi-act gospel shows.

The causes of social empowerment and justice became intertwined with their music's spiritual core in 1963, after Pops took the family to hear Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. preach at his church in Montgomery, Ala.

"When we got back to the hotel, Pops said, 'I like his message. If he can preach it, we can sing it.' So we started writing and performing songs like 'March Up Freedom's Highway,' about the historic civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, and 'It's a Long Way to D.C.' about the march on Washington, and 'When Will We Be Paid.' "

The Staples, she recalled, "made many appearances with Dr. King, singing before he would speak. His special favorite of ours was 'Why (Am I Treated So Bad)', written for the Little Rock children who were barred by the police from boarding a bus to go to school."

In 1968, the Staples clan made an important move, signing with Memphis-based Stax Records and moving toward a more embracing style of what Pops would call "affirmative, happy music that makes a positive point."

Three years later, the album "Be Attitude: Respect Yourself" took them to mainstream and worldwide acceptance, first with the title track belted brilliantly by lead singer Staples, and then with the No. 1 hit, "I'll Take You There."

"The church wanted to put us out because of 'I'll Take You There,' " Staples recalled. "They said we were singing 'devil's music' because it was played across the board on R&B stations. But the devil doesn't have no music. We were singing God's music. In that song, we were talking about taking you to heaven."

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SUBHED HERE:'A whole brand new day'

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In truth, the Staples were, as Staples put it, "taking the weight" for changing the sound of spiritual music, for funking up their arrangements with those red-hot Memphis horns and rhythm sections.

"We were the pioneers for contemporary gospel and got jumped on for it," she still believes. "Eventually, the fury died down and we were invited back to church. And don't you know, the first song they wanted to hear was 'I'll Take You There.' "

Ironically, she would later be turned off by some of the turns contemporary Christian music took. "I felt like the kids were making a mockery of God's music, when I saw a Kirk Franklin video with scantily dressed women kicking up their legs. But Pops said, 'Mavis, it's a whole brand-new day. We wouldn't do it that way, but everything must change.' "

Staples eventually came around to the new order of things, even signing as a solo act to longtime fan Prince's Paisley Park label in the late '80s and cutting two albums with the controversial talent as her producer and songwriter.

"It turned out to be a wonderful experience. He's the most beautiful young man, very humble and very spiritual. He was so bashful he couldn't even talk to me, face-to-face, though he'd talk to my sister Yvonne and I'd write him long letters - 14, 15 pages long - telling him things from my childhood. On every song on my album 'The Voice,' I hear something out of my letters."

SUBHED HERE:Family affairs

A couple of tracks on Staples' new album were originally intended to be on one last Staples family project. Then sister Cleo fell ill and could no longer perform. And an ailing Pops came up with enough material and strength to record a full disc on his own.

The sessions were completed shortly before his death on Dec. 19, 2000. Not long after, the Staple Singers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. (Staples said that final Pops Staples album will come out next year via Alligator Records, her new home.)

"After Pops went, Cleo really fell apart. So I took off a year to work with her, to find out what this disease is all about," Staples shared. "Eventually I got her with a mother and daughter care team who're truly angels, who're with her all the time, and she's doing real well. My sister Yvonne told me I should go back to singing, and she'd keep the books for me.

"But after I did the album and the first three concerts I was really feeling the loss, being alone out there. I told Yvonne, 'You just have to come out and sing with me. I have to hear one Staples voice.' So she's out on the road with me again."

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Thanx for the info...

I love Mavis...