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Playing to a packed crowd at Brooklyn's Bell House on Tuesday night, the legendary soul singer Mavis Staples took the stage-- one that's more typically a platform for laconic indie-rocker types--and showed the mostly under-50 audience what it meant to really work--physically, not just spiritually--in service of a song. Visibly winded between numbers, her lower lip occasionally trembling with emotion, the 71-year-old Staples performed an extended version of "Freedom Highway" ("I won't turn around, no I won't, no I won't, I won't turn around..."), and told the crowd afterward: "I'm still on that highway...I'm still on it. A lot of you probably weren't around then. So for you, this is gonna be a history lesson." Certainly the show itself felt historic, even for those who didn't need any schooling. (Sample blips from Twitter: @noelnocciolo writes: Mavis Staples @ the bell house. & she covered "the weight." I die. Major life moment, thanks / @kevinrfree: I'm watching Mavis Staples live at the Bell House in Brooklyn. Um, she's FIERCE /@bzurer: Just home from one of the best concerts I have ever experienced in my life. Mavis Staples @ The Bell House. And my favorite, from @CelebStoner: @ Mavis Staples show, Bell House, Bklyn - Mavis pedicts Jet-Bears Super Bowl...)
Those words echoed what she told Brian Williams in an interview at the Apollo Theatre, shortly after the release of her 2007 collection of Civil Rights-era songs, "We'll Never Turn Back": "We dont want to forget Dr. King -- a lot of these young people weren't there, and we want them to know, and to try and finish what Dr. King started." You can watch the full interview above.
There's not tons of great archival material of the Staples Singers freely available online, but here's a pretty captivating clip of "When Will be Paid," from 1971. And you can watch more recent unplugged versions of songs from her new album, "You Are Not Alone," produced by Wilco's Jeff Tweedy. (As Staples exclaimed after performing the title song on Tuesday night, "that kid Tweedy can WRITE").
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hola, cynthia, when coretta scott king passed, a woman who looked very much like her, except about 50 lbs. heavier, showed up at walmart, working the register. i thought that was very interesting. the day she passed, i laid down to rest, i was very tired, and my forehead started breaking out like crazy. they were little water blisters, VERY itchy, i had to pop them open as fast as they were coming up. when i got up and went to look in the mirror at my poor forehead, it looked like a big circle in the upper middle. like the root of a unicorn horn. when i sat down at my computer, i found out that she had passed. coretta was a royal scot. the mystical scots who are not highlanders are called 'unicorns'. they killed scottish unicorns during the iran hostages crisis. and it wasn't iranians who killed them. they took them down with a neurological virus very much like the virus that is shown at the beginning of the movie 'the rock', with sean connery and nicholas cage. the flesh on their skulls and their brains melted. ugh. i had that vision when i pulled up the astronomy picture of the day one night a couple of weeks before she passed and the cratered moon that was pictured looked like what their faces would have looked like, with a shallow crater for the root of the unicorn horn. the mystical world is a very dangerous place, not to be played with or sought out for adventure and thrills, like the 'yoania' of the pascua yaqui tribe. the people who make the vampire movies do the kids a great disservice. you better be well grounded in the higher power of your choosing if you venture there. your soul is lunch.