From her gospel days with her family band, The Staple Singers, and her active role in the Civil Rights movement, to chart-topping R&B success in the '70s and now a successful, Grammy-winning solo artist, Mavis Staples really is one of the last true Ladies of Soul.
Mavis will be returning to Australia this April to play Bluesfest, accompanied by a full band which includes, among others, Rick Holmstrom on guitar and Jeff Turmes on bass, as well as one of the original Staple Singers, Mavis’ sister Yvonne on backing vocals. Together they’ll perform songs from a back catalogue that runs the gauntlet from gospel and folk, to R&B, soul and pop. “Well, we always bring the old and the new,” Mavis explains in the sultry, Chicago tone that has made her such an incomparable talent.
“So we’re going to be singing some of the old songs that the Staple Singers played: gospel songs, freedom songs and message songs, as well as some of the new songs that I’ve recorded with Jeff Tweedy [Wilco] on my albums, ‘You’re Not Alone’ and ‘One True Vine’. We go back and it surprises people with the stuff we bring because we always go back down memory lane and we pull out something that gets a big surprise and a big hand.”
With a career spanning over half a century and transcending the confines of genre, Mavis says narrowing down a setlist has been difficult but thinks she and her band have come up with one that will please everyone and which may include a few surprises. “We study [the setlist] very well, we take our time with it and the band and I talk back and forward. Also, we’ve added a rock song that we did for the Talking Heads, ‘Slippery People’ – we’ve been doing that lately and people love it. We’ve also been doing a song that Curtis Mayfield wrote for us, ‘Let’s Do It Again’, [from the movie of the same name]. We’ve added that and that’s all I’m going to tell you, those two. I’m going to let the rest be a surprise,” she says with a laugh.
Although promoted as ‘Australia’s premier blues & roots festival’, Bluesfest has evolved to encompass a wide slice of the music spectrum and this year is no exception. Along with Ben Harper, the line-up includes artists from the worlds of rock (Lenny Kravitz, Counting Crows), hip hop (Jurassic 5), funk (George Clinton & Parliament, Funkadelic) and even ethnic folk with the actual kings of the gypsies, The Gipsy Kings. “I used to ask my father,” Mavis recalls, “I said ‘Pop, why are they calling us to blues festivals? We don’t sing no blues,’ and Pop said, ‘Mavis, you go back and you listen to our music and you’ll hear some of every kind of music is in our music’.
“And I did go listen and I heard jazz, I heard gospel, I heard folk so wherever they put us and whoever they put us with we’re going to fit. That’s the way it is, we don’t have any titles; we stopped categorising ourselves because we started singing so many different genres of music … we are Ben Harper and we are a part of all the artists we’re playing with.”
After a lifetime of touring, performing and fighting the good fight, no-one could blame Mavis, now in her 70s, if she decided to call it a day and put her feet up with a good book. Yet, in the same rebellious American spirit that fought centuries of oppression, she pushes on stronger than ever, determined to sing till her last breath. “People say ‘Mavis, when you gonna [sic] retire?’ and as long as I have my voice, I’m not. Because my work is not work, my work is fun. It’s not a job for me to travel: I’ve done it all my life and it’s in my blood so it’s not hard for me what I do.
"I enjoy singing just as much as the people in the audience enjoy hearing the song; I’m having just as much fun as they are. So you’re probably going to have to scrape me up off the stage before I retire. Last year I had two knee replacements and man, I didn’t stop. I came home the same day and I was back on the road in five weeks. Nobody believed it, they said, ‘Mavis, you’re not supposed to be here!’ I said, ‘Y’all don’t know nothing about one of God’s children’.”
Having worked alongside the renowned Aretha Franklin and producing chart-smashing hits like, ‘I’ll Take You There’, ‘Respect Yourself’ and ‘If You’re Ready (Come Go With Me)’, Mavis is someone who knows a thing or two about divas. The D-word is bandied about liberally these days but for Mavis, there’s only one voice who lives up to the legacy of Aretha. “I can tell you this: the one that was in the same league as Aretha and probably surpassed her was Whitney Houston.
“She was a great artist; she could do anything with her voice and she’s the one I would put in with Aretha. You got a bunch of them, but Whitney is my main one. There’s Tina Turner, Rihanna, she’s good, and Beyonce [but] they’re newbies, I call them ‘the newbies’. But Whitney Houston sang old-soul, she sang like an old soul and she knew what she was talking about; she made you believe what she was singing about and she lifted you. This girl, every time I heard her I said, ‘Lord have mercy, we got another one’ and she is the one I would put up against Aretha Franklin.”
Mavis has also been the recipient of countless awards and accolades over the years for her work in both the music industry and as a civil rights activist, including a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and most recently the Woody Guthrie Prize.
Although she is grateful for all the recognition, Mavis says her true reward is her legion of adoring fans. “I do enjoy getting the awards but what makes me feel really good is the fans: they support us, they’re there for us and they keep me going. Just like Congressman John Lewis told me about the Civil Rights movement, he said ‘You know Mavis, you and your family were the soundtrack to the Civil Rights movement. You all just kept us motivated.’
“So that’s how I feel: I’m very grateful to have anyone award me with something but my biggest joy is my fans and people continuing to support us after all these years, it’s amazing. We have sold-out shows every time we go out and some of the people are new people. Some are old fans and a lot are new fans, so the new generation. I’m just grateful for the fans and the people.”
Mavis Staples Tour Dates
Sat 29 Mar - West Coast Blues And Roots (Perth)Sun 31 Mar - The Gov (Adelaide)
Wed 1 Apr - Recital Centre (Melbourne)
Thu 2 Apr - Meeniyan Town Hall
Sat 4 Apr - Big Sky Blues & Roots Festival (Deniliquin)
Sun 5 Apr - Bluesfest (Byron Bay)
Mon 6 Apr - Bluesfest (Byron Bay)
Wed 8 Apr - Brisbane Powerhouse
Thu 9 Apr - Street Theatre (Canberra)
Fri 10 Apr - Lizotte's (Newcastle)
Sun 12 Apr - Sydney Opera House
