Even if bystanders have an impression of it as "a tree grafted on by a bamboo", the persons themselves may hold and lean on a consistent creed. The six-CD box set "Say It Loud !", on which the history of improvement on blacks' position is told, brings you various kinds of music : you may feel a little bit of conflict when you compare message songs with the performer, however, you can find in them beautiful expressions. While I had heard it sung by a then fledging star Bruce Willis appeared on a TV drama "Moonlighting" and I had found it kind of boring, Respect Yourself delivers me quite a right message with a more prominent emotion when I listen to the original of the Staple Singers. And then I got myself a Japanese edition "Be Altitude : Respect Yourself" and I really fell in love with it. In addition to rather sophisticated but gritty backings served by the band of Muscle Shoals, you may be astonished at harmonious choruses of a family, a father and three daughters. Respect Yourself starts with Pops a.k.a. Roebuck Staples' soft tenor and after exchanging chorus there arrives 'the principal' Mavis Staples on the middle of the seat. Her low voice, often referred as contralto, has a deliberate but strong emotion in the use of breathings or the way of modulating words, in the song I have mentioned above she bursts open comfortably and blows my mind. I'll Take You There presents Mavis' glamorous voice which calls and responses with a simple and lingering chorus, intertwines with each solo of piano, guitar, harmonica and bass, and finally gives you an uplifting emotion as if she takes you to the heaven. These two tunes particularly lead to the church gospel where they started from and the exchanges of such sounds are the heart of them, while you cannot hear them all on their single versions because they were thought so superfluous in a commercial point of view that they were editted into the mold. Although you can hear their single ones on a history-like 4-CD set "The Stax Story", I recommend you to listen to this album including other rushing tunes, not some compilations.
Since I got inclined to having their other albums, at first I grasped ones of their gospel days at Vee Jay, "Uncloudy Day" (on its sleeve there are five, Pops, Mavis and Cleotha, Yvonne and a son Pervis), "Swing Low" and "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" (the latter two miss Yvonne). While Mavis appeared in her early teens already allures you with her alto, you may find Pops' reverberated Delta-blues guitar more eminent. Pops was born in Mississippi and earned his living by playing blues in his teens, but he became devoted to church gospel and was said to have had an interval in playing guitar. It may be because self-drenched blues guitar men like Charley Patton played 'devil's music', sometimes so called by the church. In spite of it Pops was said to take a guitar in his home and polished the skill of chorus with his children. This family group was formed in the Jubilee style of four, men and women, and a blues guitar, which had been one of a kind in the gospel field, and you can find each raw tone wonderful on their tunes like Uncloudy Day, Swing Low or Swing Down Chariot. In their Stax years there are folkish albums "Soul Folk in Action" and "We'll Get Over", performed by the members of the MG's featuring Pops' guitar. There are Long Walk to DC or When Will We be Paid for the Work We Did mirroring the times on the one hand and prevailing tunes' readings on the other : the family still had been coherent in the intent of delivering something to the society since their gospel days, however, they subliminally suggested the problem gospel singers would face, that is, the economical one such as "Why can't we get what we deserve of, while we are so good and we can well attract the audience?". It is easier for others to say "You should not expect any reward from religion", however, it's so hard to force those who live their own real life to be patient even if they get nothing of it. Especially it is almost impossible to be 'saints' for those who earn their bread with such an unsettled gamble as making and selling songs.
The family's honest thirsty for "wanting a hit" came to fruition when they had Muscle Shoals recordings produced by Al Bell, who took the steering wheel of Stax. Albums of the four, Pervis out and Yvonne in, "The Staple Swingers", "Be What You Are" and "City in the Sky" are full of ideas including over-dubbing which had never appeared on the old Stax. Not only Respect Yourself or I'll Take You There, but also Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha Na Boom Boom), You've Got to Earn It, Oh La De La, If You're Ready (Come Go with Me), Touch a Hand, Make a Friend, City in the Sky and so forth are pop and intimate, and not the least lose the charm of voices. According to the book of Rob Bowman who have gather matters and affairs of Stax for years, someone recollected and muttered as follows : one of pivotal song-writing teams in the second half of Stax, Homer Banks, Carl Hampton and Raymond Jackson, wrote a song Be What You Are and were convinced that "We have got a big hit !", and they asked Mavis for singing it. However, when the Staples listened to it, Pops began claiming "That's good. I'll do it", and then that's why "We had missed a jackpot". This episode suggests that making hit records should have been the main theme of Stax in its latter chapter. Just before Stax's bankruptcy they moved to a corporate Warner, and released the original soundtrack of the movie "Let's Do It Again" teaming up with Curtis Mayfield. Its title tune Let's Do It Again brings you sensual mixing of Curtis' unique guitar and Mavis' delivery, and other tunes or instrumentals are about love, which are far away from their starting point of gospel. Despite it, the album's funkiness on New Orleans and so on are all good.
You can have a compilation "A Family Affair" covering tunes from 1953, the Staple Singer's debut on wax, to 1984. Besides those of Vee Jay and Stax, we can taste a little anxiously reverberating guitar works of Riverside and Epic, during the period between the two labels I have mentioned, such as Why (am I Treated So Bad) or For What It's Worth, whose original is that of the Buffalo Springfield. Since the family were inspired by and were in sympathy with the Civil Rights Movements of Dr. Martin Luther King and others, they began singing protesting ones against the government or the society together with gospel tunes in the mid-60s, and they invited the gospel fundamentalists' criticism. However, they not only protested but encouraged the folks and talked to them about ideals, and such attitudes of projecting songs into the world might lead to the pulling down of the fence between gospel and secular music. In this compilation Rob Bowman also writes liner notes in detail and mentions about the matters which are not so advantageous to persons called as 'Artists' : an instrumental of Jamica's Harry J & the Allstars The Liquidator (this can be heard on "The Trojan Story" and more) exerted a great influence on the sound-making of I'll Take You There, or though If You're Ready (Come Go with Me) puts stress on its lyrics, it is a second brew of I'll Take You There. These things are always together with hit making, however, I think they are subtle thanks to the right and tight compositions and the overwhelmingly persuasive power of Mavis' voice. By the way, their Who Took the Merry out of Christmas? is a twisted and fine tune which contains the tinkling of a bell, a standard sound in Christmas songs, but is not so sounded like Christmas one because of the intense voices served by the Staples.
After Pops Staples passed away, Mavis keeps cutting her solo ones. She loses higher timbre and gets hoarse, however, her voice remains fascinating and persuasive. "We'll Never Turn Back", produced by Ry Cooder, contains new compositions and gospels and traditionals, which are not always arranged in the old form but inherit the spirit. It's just what the title says. In the song I'll be Rested, Mavis sings out the names of the Reverend King at first, who lost his life in the Civil Rights Movement, and the names of Mahalia Jackson, Clara Ward, Marion Williams or Dorothy Love Coates, gospel singers she admired or was familiar with, and the names of Moms and Pops Staples at last. We'll know that she manages to overcome her parents' death. "Live : Hope at the Hideout", her live with three-pieces band and three chorus persons, is consisted mainly of tunes from her previous album, gospels and social-conscious ones before the Staples became hit makers at Stax, that is, tunes of reberberated blusy Telecaster Pops had picked. As an encore, she did I'll Take You There in the simple arrangement without rich horns or something. That makes me feel so good. It's so hard to inherit her super-modulated contralto, but I say we should be looking forward to finding someone who inherit her spirit. (2005/12/23)(2009/07/05)