Mavis Staples with special guest Allen Toussaint performs at the Chan Shun Concert Hall at UBC's Chan Centre, Sunday, Oct. 16 at 7 p.m.
DUTIFUL daughter, civil rights activist and gospel music legend Mavis Staples is still going strong in her eighth decade.
Her latest recording, You Are Not Alone, produced by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy, won a Grammy Award this year for Best Americana Album. Pitchfork reviewer Stephen M. Deusner says Staples "still sounds invigorated and ecstatic, unburdened by cynicism or disappointment. With Tweedy, she has created a record that is mindful of her own past, yet these songs sound fresh, original, and often inspiring."
Showing no signs of slowing down any time soon Staples will perform with her band at UBC's Chan Centre on Sunday before heading off to play in Melbourne, Australia. She spoke to the News earlier this week from her home in Chicago.
North Shore News: You were born in Chicago but your parents had arrived just a few years earlier from Mississippi - how close were your family's ties with the South when you were growing up?
Mavis Staples: I had a very strong connection with the South. I stayed in Chicago in the summer and went to school in Mound Bayou, Mississippi. Pops had four children and he said we were wearing out the shoes too fast so he sent the two youngest down to my (maternal) grandmother.
I went to school down there for about three semesters, three years, until I started crying to come home because my grandma wouldn't let me suck my finger and she wouldn't let me sing. I just sang a song there one time in school and someone told her that I was up at the schoolhouse singing the blues. She set me outside to get some switches and she tore my little legs up. And every lick she was saying, "You don't sing no blues in this family you sing church songs."
My sister Yvonne didn't have any problem with my grandma. She actually graduated from school in Mississippi but we would come home during the summer. So I knew a lot about it. My father, when we started travelling he would take us to certain places and show us certain things. He showed us where he proposed to my mother down in Drew, Mississippi. He showed us the corner where he bought his first little guitar - he put it in the layaway, it was a hardware store. He would listen to Charlie Patton - his father was a sharecropper and they were down on Dockery's Farm down in Drew, Mississippi and Charlie Patton was there. Pops loved the way he played guitar so he wanted to play guitar. He told us he was making 10 cents a day and he would save his dimes. He put that guitar on the layaway until he had enough to get it out and then he taught himself to play the guitar. But I'm very familiar with the South.
North Shore News: Your father was very familiar with the blues, wasn't he?
Mavis Staples: Yes, he was, because Charlie Patton was down on Dockery Farms, as was Howlin' Wolf. Pops was a kid and then down in Mississippi you heard the blues all the time anyway. For years we sang with our father - we were singing gospel and we didn't realize Pops was actually playing the blues over the top. He's a bluesman but he didn't go that route - he wanted to sing gospel and play the blues on his guitar.
North Shore News: We never hear too much about your mother, Oceola Ware.
Mavis Staples: Oceola Ware. You didn't want to hear my mother sing. We would be on the floor begging, "Mama, Mama, please stop." Our sides would be hurting from laughing, she just couldn't carry a tune but she was the world's greatest cook and homemaker.
My mother was the best mom in the world. Everybody says things like that about their mother and father. My mother she didn't use any recipes she would just mix up whatever she wanted to cook with a whole lot of love in it. She made a sweet potato pie that Pops would give to the disc jockeys.
The disc jockeys started saying, "The Staple Singers don't need no payola, because they have pieola." Sweet potato pie. And Brother Ray Charles - lots of entertainers would come to our house and mama would cook for them. Ray Charles he came for dinner and mama served that sweet potato pie and he started rocking and tapping his feet saying, "We could start a franchise with these sweet potato pies. We could make big ones, little ones, we could get rich or something."
Mama she made the best and the one who makes the sweet potato pie closest to my mother in the family is my brother Pervis. All of us would watch her. My sister Yvonne she cooks just like mama because Yvonne learned from my grandmother and mother. When Pervis made that first sweet potato pie I couldn't believe it, it was so close to Mama's. She was our spiritual guide and every time we'd leave town to go out on the road she would pray with us.
North Shore News: What part of Chicago were you living in as a kid?
Mavis Staples: When I was a kid we lived on the South Side on 35th and Wabash and then we moved to the West Side. I think we lived on the West Side for maybe two years and then we moved back to the South Side. When I was a youngster we lived on 35th Street. I went to Doolittle Grammar School and I tell you this was a neighbourhood - Sam Cooke, Lou Rawls, Curtis Mayfield and Johnnie Taylor all of us lived on 33rd, or 35th or 37th - we called it the "Dirty Thirties." We lived in the "Dirty Thirties" and we all went to Doolittle Grammar School. They were in a higher grade, they were all older than me. I was the youngest but my brother, Sam Cooke and all of these guys would get together. I remember hearing them in the summertime downstairs singing doowop. That was another one who was there - Pookie Hudson - he was with The Spaniels. He sang "Goodbye sweetheart, well it's time to go." That was the best time of my life.
North Shore News: I read an interview with your dad where he said that he and Pervis sang lead for about two years and then you took over.
Mavis Staples: Pervis was the lead and I was the baritone. Pervis reached puberty and his voice changed overnight. Pops said, "Mavis you're going to have to sing the lead Pervis can't get up there and I told him, "Oh no, Daddy, I don't want to sing lead, I love background." I thought baritone was the prettiest voice in the background and Pops he had a little belt that he had cut it about the size of a ruler and that's what he would get my little legs with when I was bad. I kept telling him, "No, no Daddy I don't want to sing lead,' and he started reaching for that little piece of belt and I said, 'OK Daddy I'll sing that lead." From that time on I was singing lead. Pops, he would sing swing lead, we called it swing lead, you know, call and answer. So Pervis had to start singing baritone. And that's the way it was, that's the way we started.
North Shore News: You said your father made you sing older songs. As a kid who were some of your favourite singers?
Mavis Staples: Sister Mahalia Jackson was my favourite. She was my idol. She was the very first female voice that I heard. Pops had all of these big 78 records and they were all male - the Dixie Hummingbirds, the Nightingales, the Blind Boys. One day I was back in my little play area and I heard this lady's voice and it moved me all up into the living room where my father was and I sat on the floor and listened to it until it was over and I asked dad, I said, "Who was that?" and he said, "Baby you liked that?" I said, "Yes sir, I liked that," and he said, "That was Mahalia Jackson and she was singing
'Move On Up A Little Higher.' " I also liked to hear the Sallie Martin Singers and Bessie Griffin and Dorothy Love Coates. I loved those ladies. Albertina Walker with The Caravans because that's all that I was allowed to hear. Pops wouldn't allow us to hear any other music than gospel. The only time that I would hear R&B is when I would go to school and we would play it at lunch time. You put a quarter in the jukebox and I would hear some James Brown but we weren't allowed to play that in the house. It was way later that Pops came through, he kind of got more broadminded.
I must have been about 15 or 16 when Pops started letting us turn the radio on to R&B stations. He liked the music too, he heard good music in R&B. That was good music back in the day. He started letting us turn it on at home. We still couldn't play cards. Today I don't know how to play cards. He wouldn't let us have any cards in the house. Now my baby sister Cynthia, Cynthia came so late behind me I think Pops was tired - I was the baby for 12 years and then Cynthia came along. She can shuffle and deal cards like somebody in Las Vegas.
North Shore News: You grew up with Curtis Mayfield.
Mavis Staples: Yes we did we went to grammar school together. We kind of parted ways for awhile as we were growing up but it turned out that Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions - I was 18 or 19 - it turned out that we lived on the same block. They had three little houses in a row and my father had bought a four-flat building and he was walking down the street and he bumped into Curtis and he said, "Hey Curtis, do you live around here?" and he said, "Yea, Pops I live right down there." They lived in three little bungalows in a row. This was on 89th Street. We had moved from 35th Street. We were still on 35th Street when we recorded 'Uncloudy Day' but Pops started making more money than what his job was paying him. We moved to higher ground. (Sings) 'Movin' on up.' Now the only one who is still down in the 'Dirty Thirties' is the Ice Man, Jerry Butler. He still lives down there but it's more of a modern area now.
North Shore News: How did you meet Jeff Tweedy?
Mavis Staples: We were singing at a place called The Hideout on the North Side of Chicago. The Wilco band, all of them, live on the North Side, I live on the South Side and all of them came to that show. I was recording a live album there.
I didn't know who Jeff Tweedy was but it was someone who wanted to meet me and I'm always ready to meet new people. He came to the dressing room and commended me on the show. He thought it was great and we took pictures together and about two weeks later my manager called and said, "Mavis, Jeff Tweedy wants to produce your next record," and I said, "You're kidding," and he said, "No he wants to produce you," and I said, "That will be fine with me."
We set up a time for Jeff and I to meet at a restaurant. I picked the restaurant for us to have lunch and we talked. He let me in to his life I let him into my life. When he started talking about family that sold me on him because my father has always instilled in us the importance of family. Family is the strongest unit in the world, always stick with your family. He would talk about his wife and his children. He was always listening to the Staple Singers and he loved my father. I was just really comfortable with him, we talked for maybe two and a half hours.
When I left that restaurant I felt like I knew Jeff Tweedy and I knew that we could make a good record together. He's open-hearted, he speaks from his heart. At first he was kind of bashful I said, "Now don't tell me I've got another Prince here." I said something funny and that loosened him up because he was kind of shy at first but he started talking. We had a good time. We had a good meeting and from that he got my number and he called me about a week later and said, "Mavis, I've put some songs on my computer and I want to know if you will come over to the Wilco loft to hear these songs and see if there is anything that you like well enough to record."
So I went over to Wilco's loft and he started playing these songs and he was playing some songs that my father used to play for me when I was a kid. You know like 'Wonderful Saviour' and 'Creep Along Moses' and I said, "That's the Golden Gate Jubilee Singers where did you get that? That's older than me, those songs were recorded in the early '30s. I said, "You're a young man with an old soul."
He had 13 songs and I think I chose seven or eight of them. Then he said, "Mavis I have this title in my head I want to write this song for you.' He said, "You Are Not Alone'" and he started giving me some of the meat of the song and my skin was moving on my bones. I said, "Tweedy you've got to write that." Low and behold the two songs that he wrote for the CD were the last two songs that we recorded.
I actually watched him write 'Only the Lord Knows' and I watched him struggle with 'You Are Not Alone.' He stopped and he said, "Listen, Mavis, I'm going to give you this track so you can get familiar with the melody but these are not the true lyrics. I'm going to have them for you when you come in tomorrow" and I said, "OK."
He went home and we went into the studio the next day and he started giving me those lyrics and I started singing them and I said, "Jeff Tweedy this is the most beautiful song I have ever sung. It's just so comforting and so real." I enjoyed working with him. I said, "Look, Tweedy, we are going to have to do this again." He said, "I don't know if they'll let me, Mavis." I said, "Oh I'll see to the letting you. I can't go to somebody else after this." He said, "I would love to produce you," and I said, "Oh, we'll make it happen."
jgoodman@nsnews.com
