Last night, my mother, father, wife, and I drove across town to the Silver Star Hotel, Resort, & Casino here in Philadelphia, Mississippi to catch the baby girl (she's only sixty nine) of the late, great Pop Staples. I'll talk about the concert (with the Blind Boys of Alabama) sometime this weekend, but for now I'll focus instead on the initial single of Ms. Staples' latest album, 2007's We'll Never Turn Back--not only the best pop album released last year, but quite possibly the best of the decade.
"Down in Mississippi" was written and first recorded by J.B. Lenoir in 1966. Like Staples, Lenoir was a Mississippian by birth (1929 for Lenoir). He moved to Chicago when he was twenty, and soon began playing the blues. He had a few small hits on the R&B chart throughout the latter half of the next decade, but nowhere near enough to make ends meet, so he had to take other jobs just to get by. In the early sixties, Lenoir met the great blues songwriter Willie Dixon. Dixon helped Lenoir record his next two albums, and both diverged greatly from what Lenoir--and most other bluesmen of the time--had previously recorded, both in style and in content. Lenoir's lyrics now contained harsh social commentary, very daring (and literally dangerous) for the time, especially considering they were sung by a black Southern native (whose wife still lived there). "Down in Mississippi," first recorded in 1966, exemplifies the changes in Lenoir's blues, as the music contains some African instrumentation, and the lyrics reflect the (then) tumultuous, violent, and murderous acts that came to a head in 1964 in Neshoba County.
Mavis Staples was singing back then with her family as the youngest member of the Staple Singers, a highly influential group, further integrating gospel into popular r&b music (where Ray Charles, James Brown, & Aretha Franklin paved the way for the later success of the Staple Singers by letting gospel music influence their music and singing, the Staple Singers let gospel music influence their lyrics as well).
Mavis' father--and Staple Singers founder and guitarist--Pop Staples met Dr. King (both already fans of one another) in 1962, and Staples decided to join the Freedom Movement, playing at places where King would speak, singing at rallies and at churches, and even joining the march from Selma to Birmingham. Staples and his daughters Cleotha, Yvonne, and Mavis (and later, for a time, his son Pervis) knew King well, and they knew King's fear of speaking in Mississippi, specifically in Neshoba County, the one place King said he ever truly feared for his life.
Mavis Staples grew up in Mississippi, and in her rendition of Lenoir's song, she relates an incident in which she, as a child, integrated a washeteria in Forest (MS). She tells the story about midsong, and she doesn't just relate the story; she witnesses. She doesn't preach, not exactly, not traditionally, but she uses the style of many an African-American Southern Baptist preacher. Her voice--not quite the full-throated powerhouse it once was, back thirty years ago when the only female singers that rivaled her talent were Aretha Franklin and Darlene Love--has aged and serrated somewhat, giving her an authorotative rasp (especially prevalent when she reaches her upper register), her voice now more blues than soul or gospel, giving the lyric a timeless quality. Mavis Staples' glory in this song can also be found in her numerous chuckles, at once sounding like someone laughing at how ridiculous life used to be, and also sounding like someone laughing because those terrible times have been conquered--it's a proud laugh. It's triumphant. It's righteous. It's liberating because she's liberated. It's freeing because she's free.
She's not overjoyed, though, as her band--and Ry Cooder's production, heavy on the reverb--keeps her earthbound, a creepy reminder of the way things used to be. The record's tone isn't tense or scabrous as Lenoir's original, but in its own ways, it's just as timely and imporant. The record's interplay of victorious voice and triuphant lyrical interlude against the rural instrumentation and archaic reverb make this record spectacular, a haunting hallelujah. Mavis Staples has returned triumphant back down to Mississippi, all the "For Colored Only" signs gone, most of the "For Colored Only" feelings gone, too...but not forgotten.
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