Nov. 14--Mavis Staples has had birthday parties before, but never one quite like this. Among the artists performing Wednesday at the Auditorium Theatre for the gospel-soul singer's 75th anniversary celebration will be Bonnie Raitt, Arcade Fire's Win Butler and Regine Chassagne, Jeff and Spencer Tweedy, Patty Griffin, Aaron Neville, Emmylou Harris, Taj Mahal and Gregg Allman.
"So many good things have happened to me this year, and now this," Staples says. "Is someone trying to tell me something? That's what it feels like, like this is my last roll call. Usually these things only happen after you're gone or on your way out."
One of the concert's organizers, Blue Note Records President Don Was, doesn't see it that way. "She's a vital, very much alive artist," he says. "I saw her debut a song ('One True Vine') from her last record (in 2013), it was just her and a guitar player. If there was a dry eye in the house, that person must've been dead. She's a heroic figure, because she's never compromised what she does for the sake of being trendy."
Staples maintains a heavy tour schedule and is that rare septuagenarian artist who is making music now that is as potent as when she was at her commercial peak with the Staple Singers in the '70s. She first sang with her family -- her father Roebuck "Pops" Staples and siblings Cleotha, Pervis and Yvonne -- when she was 8 years old in the South Side churches where she grew up during the '40s. Her deep lead vocals as a teenager defined the Staple Singers' massive gospel hit "Uncloudy Day" in 1957. Her family helped provide the soundtrack for the civil-rights movement in the '60s as Dr. Martin Luther King's frequent collaborators, and made a mark on the '70s charts at Stax Records with classics such as "I'll Take You There" and "Respect Yourself." After her father died in 2000, Mavis Staples reinvented herself as a solo performer, with acclaimed albums produced by Ry Cooder ("We'll Never Turn Back") and Jeff Tweedy ("You Are Not Alone," "One True Vine").
In July, Staples headlined the Newport Folk Festival, where the Staple Singers first made an impact as part of the emerging protest and folk movements in the early '60s. The Staple Singers' classic "Freedom Highway," a live album recorded at a South Side church at the height of the freedom marches in 1965, is being expanded and reissued early next year after being out of print for decades. A box set spanning the Staple Singers career across the decades is being prepared for 2016 release by Concord Music Group.
Perhaps the biggest news is that the final Pops Staples studio album, recorded in the months before his death with Mavis and her sisters on backing vocals, is being readied for release next year by Tweedy, who says the album will be called "Don't Lose This."
"I think it's the coolest thing I've ever done," Tweedy says of mixing and producing the tracks from the late '90s. "The way things were arranged and mixed before, he sounded tired, a prisoner in these tracks, and then we stripped everything away and we were halfway home. I think most people will think it was recorded in 1973."
Mavis Staples says she was determined to see the album released because her father poured so much into it. "Back in 1998, Pops was sick, and he called me up to his room," she says. "He said, 'Mavis, don't lose this record.' It needed some tweaking, and I thought Tweedy should do it. I've been over to his studio and listened, and the tears wouldn't stop flowing when I heard his voice."
One of the reasons Staples has remained so vital at a time when many performers are coasting on nostalgia or turning into oldies acts is her passion for carrying on her father's message, which was intimately tied in with King's. The two were close friends, and Pops Staples wrote some of the era's most indelible protest and message songs, including "Freedom Highway," his impassioned response to the bloody Selma-to-Montgomery protest march, and "Why? (Am I Treated So Bad)," which King often mentioned as his favorite song. "Freedom Highway" is still a high point of Mavis Staples' set, and her recent music updates its mix of soulful harmonizing and righteous passion.
"My mother had all their recordings. The Staples were household names to us," Taj Mahal says. "The general American person doesn't realize how deep the African-American church goes, how much a part of the fabric of our country, the long, unbroken line between African and American music to the present time. The Staples' harmonies, the way they made chords with their voices, the only time I ever heard people do that like them was when I was in Africa in 1979. They stretched what gospel could say. The rock 'n' rollers like Elvis Presley got it. What the Staple Singers did, it's like dropping something big in the middle of the ocean, and the ripples start out and it keeps on going till it's everywhere."
One of the contemporary artists who felt the reverberations is singer-songwriter Patty Griffin, who recorded a gospel track with Mavis Staples in 2009, and then later recorded a gospel album of her own.
"Years ago, a friend of mine had some old Staples records from the '50s and '60s, the church stuff, and I listened to those records almost all the time," she says. "I study songwriters and vocalists to learn from them, but this was different, because this was the first music I was putting on to lift me up. It had this effect that I noticed right away. I would be having a crappy day and put the Staple Singers on, and sing along and I'd feel better. I was so moved by it. I couldn't dissect it. It was the first time since I was a little kid that music had this immediate charge for me. There's something about those harmonies, the way they were constructed, the blending of those individual voices where they always fall, you grow to love the people doing it."
She acknowledges that she was a bit intimidated meeting Mavis Staples for the first time, but the gospel singer put her young protege at ease, and they've become friends. Griffin gave an introductory speech for Staples when she appeared earlier this year at the LBJ Civil Rights Summit in Austin, Texas. "She is an example of how to live a life in our time that is very rare," Griffin says. "You see her sing, and you feel like you could go on from there and do something for others and be a better person."
That's a theme stuck by many of the artists who are appearing at the tribute concert. "When she sings in front of people, you can feel the hurt, the pain, the joy -- it comes out in her voice," Aaron Neville says. "It's a voice that's telling you, 'I've been there, done that. Come here, take my hand, and we'll get through this together.'"
I'll Take You There -- Celebrating 75 Years of Mavis Staples: Mavis Staples with Win Butler and Regine Chassagne of Arcade Fire, Bonnie Raitt, Otis Clay, Gregg Allman, Ryan Bingham, Eric Church, Patty Griffin, Glen Hansard, Emmylou Harris, Taj Mahal, Michael McDonald, Buddy Miller, Keb' Mo', Aaron Neville, Joan Osborne, Widespread Panic, Grace Potter, Jeff and Spencer Tweedy, and Marty Stuart, 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress Parkway, $75, $125, $175, $250, $350; ticketmaster.com.
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