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Speaking of which, there is something I've been wondering about for the longest. All these new singers that are coming out today, they all say that they "grew up in church", but yet I don't hear the same fire, intensity and "Soul" in their voices as I do when I listen to records by you, Aretha Franklin and all the other veterans. Why is that? Has the Gospel music in today's churches changed that much, or what has brought this on?
What do you think of the new style of Gospel, Kirk Franklin and God's Property, for example? They're calling this new music Hip-Hop Gospel. When Kirk Franklin first came, with "Reasons Why I Sing", "His Eye's On The Sparrow" and "I Know He Watches Me", I said "ohh, this is great". It was beautiful the way they were singing that. Then he came with "come on, everybody say stomp, stomp!" I was upset with that at first. I felt like you're making a mockery. You don't use the Lord's name in vain and you don't make a mockery out of the Lord's music. But then I caught myself and I said "I don't know this child's heart, I don't know any of these childrens' hearts. It may be that this is that generation and this is their time to do the way they can do it". But I hate to think that all the Gospel music hereafter will be like that, I'm a-tell you. In one instance it's good what they're doing, because the kids are coming off the street, going in the church to hear them and they're rejoicing. The only thing, I think, is that it may be kind of misleading to the youngsters. You gotta have foundation. It seems to me that once they go and they rejoice to this music, they come out and they're still confused. "Well, I had a good time.." I don't know, but maybe they're releasing something. I did say that it's good. It's keeping them off the street. It's so dangerous here in the States now. It's racism and it's crime and drugs, so if that will keep them off the streets and away from the drugs and what not, I don't have any gripes with it. But the only gripe I have is Kirk Franklin, when you're doing this, when you're using the Lord's name, be sincere. Don't use the Lord's name for no play thing. In the "Stomp" video, there's Salt from Salt 'N' Pepa. Well, the bible tells you to praise the Lord, praise him with strings, praise him in dance, you know, the sanctified people they dance when they get happy. But this girl is just actually kicking her leg up high, like she's on a Broadway show or something and then the kids are just doing the tootsie roll and the same dances that they do in the clubs. I have to pray and I have to ask the Lord to show me what this is and should I condone it, because it's a brand new day. It's all the way different from what we came up with. That's why I told Daddy when we make the Staple Singers CD this time, we're gonna go back and get some of our old stuff, like "Uncloudy Day", and these old Gospel songs. Because today's youth need to hear these songs. I absolutely loved the album you and Lucky Peterson recorded last year, the Mahalia Jackson tribute "Spirituals and Gospel" for the Gitanes Jazz/Verve label.
I try to buy everything that has the name "Staples" on it. Over the last years, I've bought the soundtrack to "Hoop Dreams" (MCA/GRP, '94), where you and Pops do a wonderful song called "The Tide (Keeps Lifting Me)", which was first included on Phil Upchurch's "Whatever Happened To The Blues" album (Go Jazz, '92). And the two songs you did on Phil's "Love Is Strange" (Go Jazz '95), "Leave No Child" and "Winds Of Change" are so beautiful. What other records have you appeared on that I've missed?
Aww, that's an old classic!
Aww, that's a great song! How did that come about?
I'd like to go back in time and talk a little bit more about the past. The Staple Singers started out as a Gospel group, but even before you signed for Stax Records in 1968, you had already started to record protest songs and were heavily involved in the Civil Rights Movement. When did you move from Gospel to protest songs? We were singing strictly Gospel, we did that for years, I think until around 1963. We were in Montgomery, Alabama and we visited Dr. Martin Luther King's church. Pops called us in his room and said "I'm gonna go to this man's eleven o'clock service". We didn't have to sing until eight o'clock that night. Pops said "I've been hearing about him and I like his message". So we said we wanted to go too and so we went to Dr. King's church, there on Dexter Avenue and we heard his service. His wife, Coretta, was in the choir. They only had two kids then, two babies, one was a baby in arms and the other was like a knee-baby, maybe about two years old. Dr. King stood in the back of the church and he announced that the Staple Singers were there and people clapped, you know. After the sermon, going out the church, we stopped and shook his hand and let him know how much we enjoyed the service. He told us he was happy that we came, that he had enjoyed our music for years, he loved the Staple Singers from "Uncloudy Day". When we got back to the hotel, Pops called us in his room again. It was on his mind. He said "I love this man's message and I believe that if he can preach this, we can sing it". So we started writing protest songs and joined the movement. We started marching with Dr. King and the movement. And then when you recorded songs like "Respect Yourself", you made another transition. Right. We've made three transitions from the time we started singing strictly Gospel, the first transition we made was into protest songs. We wrote stuff like "March Up Freedom's Highway" and that song was written for the march from Montgomery to Selma. Then we wrote "Why Am I Treated So Bad". We were watching the news one day and in Little Rock, there were these eleven black kids trying to go to a white school, they were trying to integrate and this particular day, the government, the President, everybody had given permission "let these children go to school". Just as the kids were boarding the bus, the police stopped them by pushing them back so they couldn't get on the bus. Pops was sitting in his recliner-chair and he said "now why are they doing that? Why are they treating them so bad like that?" and that's where the song derived from. Then we wrote songs like "Washington We're Watching You" and for the march to Washington, D.C., we wrote " It's A Long Walk To D.C.". And we wrote "We'll Get Over" and "When Will We Be Paid For The Work We've Done". Were these songs played on the radio?
Is it true that you were almost banned from church because of "Respect Yourself"? Oh, yeah! The church wanted to put us out. We were told that the Staple Singers were singing the devil's music. We had to do a lot of interviews about that. We would tell people "as far as we're concerned, the devil doesn't have any music, because music is a healing for us, it makes us happy, it makes us smile and it makes us well. The devil is not about that." We had to really do some explaining because the people were not listening to the lyrics. They just saw that they were playing "I'll Take You There" and "Respect Yourself" across the board, when normally, our records were only played on the Gospel stations. Then all of a sudden, you heard the Staple Singers on the R&B stations. You have to listen to the words. "Ill Take You There" is saying "I know a place, ain't nobody crying, ain't nobody worried, ain't no smiling faces lying to the races, I'll take you there." What other place could you take a person but heaven? We must have done hundreds of interviews, explaining these songs and they finally backed off. We actually sing "Respect Yourself", "I'll Take You There" and all our songs in church. Mavis, you have a million stories and you've had such an interesting life. Why haven't you written your autobiography? I'm sure there are billions like me who'd love to read it! My plan is to write a book. I've been talking into a tape recorder for years. When I get time, I talk some more and when I get ready to, when I feel ready, something else happens and I think "I better wait, it's not time yet". I wanna do a documentary and a book on the Staple Singers. We've got a story to tell, I promise you. We've gotta tell about how bad it was for us when we first stared travelling down through the south. It was so prejudice.. We went to jail, we beat up a white guy! (laughs). Man, we have had it! Several people have wanted to do movies about our family, but then when you get to talking to them.. One man, Yvonne and I just gave him a nice story. We talked for almost three hours and then all of a sudden, the guy jumped up and said "girl, girls, it's beautiful, but you gotta have some.. Didn't you father beat your mother or anything like that?" (laughs). I said (screams) "no, my father didn't beat up on my mother and if he did, I wouldn't tell you!" (laughs) (Laughs). By the way, Mavis. Was your mother's name Oceola? Yes! O-c-e-o-l-a, that's right. My mother had an Indian name. We have some part Cherokee in us that we're proud of. My grandmother had Indian blood. But the people want garbage. Dig this, Pops has finished his book and everything, honey, can't get a publisher. Because there's no garbage in it. Well, I know I'd love to read your story. And I am willing to bet that I'm not the only one that feels that way. It would not only be a story of the Staple Singers, but of the Civil Rights Movement, the freedom struggle. A piece of important history from some of the people who were actually there. If the publishers want ugly stuff, what could be more ugly than segregation, the way the black population were treated in America? I have no idea how much of this is taught in American schools, but even so, isn't it vital for kids that are growing up today to really know about this particular time in history?
Mavis, I can't thank you enough for taking so much time out of your day to talk to me. Before we hang up, I'd like to ask if you have an official Web Site or an E-mail address where people can write to you? This interview will be put on the Web and I know that you're 'hip to the Internet' (laughs). Yeah, I'm hip to it (laughs). But no, I'm not on it yet. But Pops has hooked himself up! He hasn't put anything on his Web Page yet, though. I have a computer here, believe me, it's just crazy. I don't know what do with it. I don't know the first thing (laughs). So someone's gonna come and hook it up for me and help get me started. I gotta get on the E-mail! | Interview Part 1 | Back to Mavis' Home Page |
Photographs from the Lollipop Festival,
Stockholm 1997 © Oskar Ponnert (oskar@gidappa.nu). |
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© Maria Granditsky
November 1997. |
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Home - Artists - What's New - Links - FAQ - Theme - About Me |
When people are
interviewed, most of them say that they started in church, sang in the choir and that's
one thing I never did do. I didn't get a chance to sing in the choir (laughs). I went to
church and I was saved when I was eleven years old, but I was too little to sing in the
choir. I started singing before I could get in the choir. But the whole matter of it is,
being serious and being a serious Christian. And singing from your heart. Just being
honest and sincere with what you're doing. See, a lot of these kids they just come out and
say that they sang in church and today, some of them join church just to sing in
the choir and then they think they can go out and make a record. But they've got to have
the Lord inside them. They've got to have the spirit inside them. You
can't just go out and say "I came out of the church, I came from the choir",
you're not gonna get that same feeling. You see, it's got to be in you, in your bones. The
scripture says "the spirit hit me and when it hit me, I felt it from the mound of my
head to the sole of my feet, it goes all the way through you" and that's the
spirit. Like you hear the saying "when the spirit hits you, you got to
move". These kids are just singing off the top of their heads and they can't have the
spirit when they do that. Now, Aretha and I, we grew up in church. Aretha's father was a
minister and we would be in church every Sunday. I told one of the guys who interviewed me
when I was there in Sweden that when I was with Prince, I told him my life story. I told
Prince that when I was a little girl, I couldn't wait 'til Sunday came. My mother would
dress me up in my cute little dress and my little patent-leather shoes and I had a little
purse and I would go to Sunday school. Then, when I was down south in Mississippi, I was
fortunate enough to be able to witness the little wooden church on the hill that my
grandmother would take me to. Every summer, me and Yvonne would stay in Mound Bayou,
Mississippi, because it was hard times for Mom and Pops. We would stay down there with
grandma and go to school and them we'd come back home in the summer. But every Sunday we
would go to church and this church, like I said, a little wooden church up on the hill, no
organist, no piano, no music and when you sang, you would hear feet patting on that wooden
floor and people clapping their hands. Just such a good sound. Even that makes
you move, you know? Because it has Soul in it, the spirit of the people. All of these
things helps you to be able to sing like myself and Aretha. We've got it in us and when
we're singing a song, we want to relay that message to you, through us. It's just the way
that the Lord moves us to do it. Doesn't matter if you're singing a secular song. That
spirit is in you and it's gonna come out, especially if you started singing Gospel songs
first. And that's what the Staple Singers are, we're basically Gospel singers, but I will
sing Country, I sing secular and that doesn't take anything from me as far as being
Christian. But when you hear me sing those sings, you're gonna hear that Gospel, because
that's the spirit, that's the Soul that's in me.
Ohh! I did that record for two reasons. Firstly because I love
Mahalia Jackson so much and secondly because I think it's time for these youths to hear
some of this stuff. The old spirituals! See, that's the problem with the new singers we
were discussing before, Maria. They're singing, but they don't know from where they came.
They don't know about the old Negro Spirituals, they don't know that songs like
"Steal Away" were message songs to the slaves to "steal away on out of the
cotton fields, come on, we got to have a meeting". It's left up to us to try to
instill into them, if they'll hear it. But I thought too of some of the parents. Like my
generation, they didn't do like my parents did. If I had had children, I would have raised
my children just like my parents raised me. But they didn't do that. They let these kids
go wild. It's a shame to say, but the kids can't help it. When they came with Rap and all
of that, I told an interviewer "they can't help but come that way. They came in the
music business off of Disco". No good music was being played on the radio when the
Disco came in. They just stopped playing good music. All you were hearing was (sings)
"ohh, love to love you, baby" and just this boogety-boogety-beat (laughs). They
would play so long, you could leave the south side and go all the way to the north side
and the same song would be playing. They were just pounding this stuff into these kids'
heads and they weren't hearing anything like "If you're ready, come go with me"
and "reach out, touch a hand, make a friend if you can". When Rap came out, if
you remember, they're kinda slowing it down now, when it first started, it was horrible,
you couldn't listen to the radio. And those little guys, they were talking under the
girls' dresses, I mean, they were saying anything on these records. And the
record companies was allowing this! That was the killing part. But the rappers were smart.
If they did something, they would sample some of the seventies' music. This generation of
artists came into the music business off of Disco, so they didn't have any substance. I
just turned my radio off and started playing my records, I would either listen to the
Gospel or the Country stations, because I just couldn't take it. It was just a lot of
noise. But is seems they're trying to clean it up, and all of the new artists are into the
seventies' music now. People want music with substance now, even the youngsters! 
I love "Winds Of Change"! My goddaughter wrote that. My goddaughter
is this little Chinese girl and she's a genius. I'm gonna do that song over again on one
of my albums. But let me think.. I also did two songs with Ann Peebles on her last album.
One's called "Fill This World With Love" and the other "Stand Up" and
we recorded that in Memphis, where she lives, last year. That's a crazy and funny girl,
Ann Peebles. We have fun when we come together. I fell in love with her when she had
"I Can't Stand The Rain" out. I said "now who is this singing this here? I
gotta see her!" I met Ann in Memphis, years ago, but this is the first time that I'm
singing with her, though. We've done a couple of concerts together, down there in Memphis,
but we haven't worked together a whole lot. I told them (Ann and her husband Don Bryant)
"if you have a good message song, I'd love to do that with Ann". Because Ann
likes to sing the Blues. So they wrote "Fill This World With Love". I really
like the song. Then I'm singing with Maria Maldo, I did two or three songs on her CD. And
guess who I just did a song with? Tom Jones! (laughs). It's not released yet, but I'm
singing a song with him called "You're Gettin Too Big For Your Britches".
Yeah, the Staple Singers recorded it, but Tom Jones didn't even know that we
recorded that! (laughs). I said "you know, the Family did that" and the guy who
was producing said; "what? When did you do it?" We did that years ago, back in
the seventies. Mack Rice wrote that, he who wrote "Respect Yourself". I'm trying
to think what else I've been doing, because I've been singing with everybody.. Um, I sang
on a record with a Country guy named Delbert McClinton and you have the record where we're
singing with Marty Stewart, it's from the "Rhythm, Country and Blues" CD? It's a
black person singing with each Country and Western person. Patti Labelle is singing with
Travis Tritt, Natalie Cole is singing with Reba McEntyre, B.B. King is singing with George
Jones, aww man. It's a CD and it's a video too! You know what we did with Marty? "The
Weight". We've recorded that three times now. We did it with the Band and we sang it
by ourselves and then Marty wanted us to sing it with him. That's about it. Some years
back, I did a beautiful song with Kenny Loggins on his album and I sang on Ray Charles's
"My World" album. That's a good one. Then I did a song called "Miss
Martha" with Curtis (Mayfield) on his latest album.
Yeah!
Curtis called me. He said (imitates Curtis) "baby, I got a song here with your name
on it." I said "you do?" and he told me he was making that new album. I
said "I hear some Mavis on this song" (laughs). I said "OK, Curtis, let me
know when you need me" and he said "just as soon as you can come." So I
told Yvonne and we went to Atlanta one morning and I went in there and put that song down
with those kids and came back home that evening, same day. He had some young kids that
were helping him produce because Curtis can only sing lying down. But I was so happy he
was doing it because I had seen him several times and I said "chucks, Curtis,
nothing's wrong with your pipes, you gotta keep on going" and he said "Mavis,
you know you're right". I was so glad to hear that he was doing another CD and I love
it!
Some
of them were too strong. They were so strong that the DJ's wouldn't play 'em on the radio.
Because the white man always owned the radio station and if the black discjockey played
"When Will We Be Paid For The Work We've Done", he might have gotten fired. We
did concerts, we marched, we raised funds and we would give it to the movement, to help
with the funds and Dr. King, he would always say to Pops "you gonna sing my song
tonight, Stape?" He loved "Why Am I Treated So Bad", that was his favorite.
And Daddy said "yeah, I'm gonna sing it, counselor". So as we moved on and as it
seemed as if things were getting better, people were coming together, we changed and made
another transition into what we called "message songs". These are the songs like
"Respect Yourself", "Reach Out, Touch A Hand", "If You're Ready,
Come Go With Me" and "I'll Take You There". We never got far away from the
Gospel music, though. These songs were inspiring to people. We had one of the real bad
gang members, Blackstone Rangers, here in Chicago and he got Pops one day and said "
Pops Staples, I'm so glad that you and your daughters made that 'Respect Yourself' because
I didn't realize I wasn't respecting myself. I would get on the bus and the ladies would
get on. They'd come from work and they'd have all these bags and I'd just sit down. After
I heard your song, I would stand up and let a lady sit down and I felt good about
myself." Daddy said "that's what we want. We wanna inspire people to do better.
Or to lift you up if you're burdened down". And Pops would tell that to the
songwriters, who wanted to write for us; "If you wanna write for the Staple Singers,
read the headlines. That's what were singing about, what's happening in the world today.
We wanna save the children as much as we can. We want to focus on the drugs, let the kids
know that it's not good for you." So these were the kind of songs the writers had to
bring to us. I don't know if you guys in Sweden can see this movie, "Eyes On The
Prize", they show it every year here, around Dr. King's birthday, but it was very
disappointing to us because they have all of the movement in there, some of the freedom
songs, but they don't have any of the Staple Singers' songs. We were with the movement
right from the beginning! And when we went to Dr. King's church in Montgomery the first
time, he hadn't even started the movement yet, he was easing up on it. It's all kind of
insulting to me, to be honest with you.
Right! They don't know. And they don't know just how important
it is to know. That's a part of our history. But it's gonna get out there, it's got
to. Daddy didn't put too much, but some of that in his book. I know, because we all helped
him with it. His book is really about the Staple Singers, but he left out a lot of stuff
that I intend to put in. Since we traveled together all those years you're gonna find some
similarities in there because we're telling some of the same stories, but then when you
tell about your own, what you felt, what places you liked the best, then that's gonna make
the difference. But we went through hell and my father would always tell us "you all
just hold your heads up high, these people down here in the south, they're no better than
you are. They're prejudice and you just have to go by their rules. We can't go in their
restaurants, we can't go in their hotels, so we won't go in those places. But don't let
anybody bring you down, because none of them are better than you are." My sisters and
I would go in the stores. In Jackson, Mississippi one time, we were gonna buy the most
expensive shoe in the store, so we could sing in these shoes, you know? When we said to
the lady "were gonna get these", she said' "ohh, that's fine", but
then when we said "but we have to try them on," she stopped. She said
"ohhh, dear. You'll have to go behind that curtain to try them on." We just
looked at her and said "no, thank you," gave her the shoes back and walked out.
We were not gonna go behind some curtain to try on some shoes that we were gonna pay a
hundred dollars for! They would ask us "you girls are not from here are you?"
and we would say "we live here, we've lived here all our lives" (laughs). We
have had some times. I have stories and I haven't forgotten anything, as far as when we
first started back in the fifties and on up to now. I have the memory of an elephant. I
can see these things in my head, just as vivid as if it was yesterday.