Interview: Mavis Staples, singer

ANYONE who follows Later With Jools Holland will appreciate that, while the music industry remains obsessed with breaking new cash cows – sorry, artists – there is still a market for the battle-hardened veterans, should they be lucky enough to be thrown a lifeline in the autumn of their careers.

• Mavis Staples sang with The Staple Singers, above left, for over half a century, with hits including Respect Yourself and I'll Take You There

Mavis Staples, the youngest member of legendary gospel group The Staple Singers, is one such "golden girl", as she puts it, who has staged a comeback in recent years with the help of a younger mentor. Just as rhythm'n'blues diva Bettye Lavette was hauled out of obscurity by collaborating with southern rockers The Drive-By Truckers, and rockabilly firecracker Wanda Jackson is currently benefiting from the patronage of Jack White, so Staples has been guided through her return, first by Ry Cooder and now by Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy, who has curated and produced her new album, You Are Not Alone.

Both Staples and Tweedy hail from Chicago. It's safe to say that she is revelling in their newfound partnership, describing the making of the album as "a lovefest" and recounting in excited detail each step of the process. "You're gonna get tired of me talking," she laughs, "but I'm just givin' it all to ya." And she does, from her first meeting with Tweedy – "we talked for maybe three hours; he let me into his life and I let him into my life," she says poetically – to her first impressions of the Wilco loft where the album was recorded: "I walked into a sea of guitars. I've never seen so many. I said, 'Tweedy, do you play all of these guitars?' He said, 'Well, I get around to it, Mavis.'"

Staples was already a confirmed Wilco fan (she says they remind her of The Band). Tweedy, for his part, surprised Staples with his knowledge of her musical heritage when he played her his proposed selection of

gospel standards for the album. "I said, 'Where did you get those? Those songs are older than me!' So many people were asking me, 'What are you gonna do next?' and I didn't have a clue. But Jeff Tweedy had the answer. He brought me back to where I was and I feel so grateful for that because it's what put The Staple Singers on the map. I'm not screamin', I'm not whoopin' and growlin'. I'm just singin'."

And how. Staples's voice is a natural joy to behold, full of soul, sensitivity and empathy. You Are Not Alone bears comparison with Raising Sand, the greatly acclaimed Robert Plant/Alison Krauss collaboration, with its warm, intuitive feel for the musical traditions it is celebrating. The album blends vintage gospel, including a soothing country pop take on In Christ There Is No East Or West, with Staple Singers originals, such as the bluesy brimstone of Downward Road and the revival meeting stomp of Don't Knock, both written by her father Roebuck "Pops" Staples, alongside covers of songs by Randy Newman, Allen Toussaint and John Fogerty. Among the highlights are two Tweedy originals, including the title track, which Staples declares, with generous enthusiasm, to be "the most beautiful song that I have ever sung".

"I love this CD," she says. "It sounds to me so much like my family, which was the best music of my life, just my father's guitar and our voices. Pops always taught us that family is the strongest unit in the world. If you stick with your family, nobody can break you, nobody can harm you. You'll always have your family."

Dubbed "God's Greatest Hitmakers", The Staple Singers began their career in Chicago churches when Mavis was a child, before gradually moving into the pop mainstream. They achieved their greatest success in the late 1960s and early 70s on Stax Records, with producer Al Bell at the helm for such inspirational anthems as Respect Yourself and I'll Take You There.

Pops lived to see his family band inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame before he died in 2000. Mavis was so bereft by his passing that she stopped singing for a time. "I was just a lost soul. I sang with my father for over 50 years and now all of a sudden he's gone, and I just dropped out. I'd sit down and I couldn't get up. My sister finally came to my home and she told me off real good. She said, 'You get up from here, you know that Pops would want you to continue to sing.' I was depressed, I was down, I was pitiful but when she talked to me like that, that was all I needed."

Staples planned her return with a renewed imperative. "I've got to sing for Pops, I've got to keep my father's legacy alive because he started all of this. So I started calling people and nobody would give me a chance but I didn't let that stop me. I took money out the bank and I started making me a record, and I did it in this guy's basement."

Staples says she was close to hawking albums herself out of her car boot when the prophetically titled Have A Little Faith was eventually picked up by blues label Alligator Records in 2004. Staples was then signed by Anti- Records who teamed her with respected guitarist/producer Ry Cooder to create We'll Never Turn Back, on which she revisited some of the freedom songs that became such an intrinsic part of The Staple Singers' repertoire during the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.

Not only did the group soundtrack that era, by resurrecting old slave songs, covering contemporary protest songs by the likes of Bob Dylan and Stephen Stills and adding their own rallying cries such as Long Walk To D.C., When Will We Be Paid For The Work We've Done and Why? (Am I Treated So Bad), they also took an active part in the movement for equality, even ending up in jail one night.

Forty years later, Barack Obama shrewdly tapped into that legacy by using I'll Take You There in his election campaign. But Staples is realistic about the progress which has been made since she sang those songs first time round. "We've had a great change," she acknowledges. "Dr King saw to that. I was so grateful to see the 'colored only' signs come off the water fountains and bathrooms in the south. But the struggle lives on. Every now and then I'll perform Paul And Silas Bound In Jail – 'keep your eye on the prize'. Because we don't have the prize yet.

"But I lift people up through our music. This is what my life has been about – lifting people's spirits and inspiring them. Just like this record says, you are not alone. I've been there, I know what it is to be down. I'm still here, I'm a living witness." Amen to that.

• You Are Not Alone is out now on Anti- Records. Mavis Staples plays her only UK date at the Jazz Caf, London, on 17 November.