Can you speak about the array of songs and artists on your new record? What kind of message and lyrics do you want to sing at this point in your life? steve_bayley
The first song I got for the album was Human Mind, written by Hozier and Allison Russell, and that really set the tone for the entire record. It starts: “I deal in love baby, in good words from above … and I ain’t giving up.” I cried when I was trying to sing it for the first time. Then the next song was Beautiful Strangers by Kevin Morby. All the songs are part of me and what I’ve been singing about my whole life. There’s some about war, fighting, love … some about hard times, like the farmer whose losing his farm. Things that are going on in the world today, so Sad and Beautiful World is the perfect title.
‘She was my idol’ … Staples sings with Mahalia Jackson at the 1969 Harlem Cultural festival.
Photograph: Entertainment Pictures/Alamy
I loved the documentary Summer of Soul. What was it like to play there [the 1969 Harlem Cultural festival] and sing alongside Mahalia Jackson? Same question for Wattstax [the 1973 Stax Records benefit concert in Watts, LA, to commemorate the seventh anniversary of the 1965 riots]. snak3span
It was an honour to sing with Sister Mahalia Jackson. She was my idol. When I was 10 or 11 I walked up to her and I said: “My name is Mavis and I sing, too.” She said: “Oh, you do, huh? Well, I wanna hear you.” I said: “You’ll hear me because I’m loud.” Then I started going out of the door to jump rope, because us children didn’t wanna hear the preacher. She pulled me over to her, and touched my neck and said I was damp. She said: “Don’t go out in the air when you’re damp like that. You wanna get to be an old lady like me and sing, don’t you?” She was letting me know how to take care of my voice. So my idol became my teacher and my friend. The Summer of Soul concert was a good time. Sister Mahalia told me: “Baby, Hayley don’t feel so well” – she always called herself Hayley – “I need you to help me sing this song.” So that’s why I came in on Precious Lord, Take My Hand. Wattstax was a different ballgame, because we were working in Las Vegas and had to rush over there. So in the documentary you see us in the back seat of a car having lunch. We didn’t have the chance to stay. It was fun watching the film because that was the first time I’d seen the show.
You were influential in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Do we need another civil rights movement now, 50 years later? AD2023
When I did my album of freedom songs with Ry Cooder [We’ll Never Turn Back, 2007] we sang a song called 99 and 1/2. You know, 99 and a half won’t do … we gotta make a hundred. We gotta keep on pushing because the struggle is still alive.
I discovered your music via Prince – The Sacrifice of Victor, a video release of one of his aftershows at Bagley’s in London [1993]. Were those times and that show as fun as it looks? DrLongpigIPresume
Oh lord. Any time I was with Prince was fun. I loved him so much but he was so painfully shy. He would talk to my sister more than me. He would just look at me, roll those big eyes and smile. I thought: well, if he’s going to write for me he’s gotta know something about me. So I wrote him some letters and the first album he produced for me [Time Waits for No One, 1989] had songs about or lyrics from what I talked about in my letters. Like, I told him I married an undertaker, so on The Undertaker [on The Voice, 1993] he wrote, “Don’t go with the crack, you might never come back … don’t be another number for the undertaker.” He was a genius. He kept everything all to himself, then it would come out like a blast.
‘Another shy guy’ … Mavis Staples and David Byrne perform at the Apollo, New York City, 2019. Photograph: Taylor Hill/Getty Images
How did you find working with David Byrne when the Staple Singers covered Slippery People? Twig_the_Wonderkid
Another shy guy. He would talk mostly to my father, but I loved David. He came to my birthday celebration in New York and we sang Slippery People together. Then I had the pleasure of going to his show on Broadway. He likes riding his bike. He was photographed with his bicycle on the No Kings marches? I’m not surprised. He rode that bicycle everywhere.
Watching old videos of you, when you sing there are moments where you go so deep you seem to be in a trance state. Is that really the case? bluesgal
I’m surprised but glad somebody noticed that. Sometimes, the spirit moves you. I definitely get lost in the music when I’m on stage. My father taught me: “Mavis, if you sing from your heart, you’ll reach the people, because what comes from the heart reaches the heart.” So when the spirit hits me, you’re gonna see Mavis looking like a zombie up there.
‘Sometimes, the spirit moves you’ … Staples, circa 1970. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives
Is it true you had heard Martin Luther King give the “I have a dream” part of his famous speech before and you shouted “Tell them about your dream, Martin”, to get him to use it that day? And you were also at the Lorraine motel in Memphis when he was shot. What do you remember about that day? SimonPav
It was Sister Mahalia Jackson who shouted “Tell them about your dream.” Also, I never called Dr King “Martin”, it was always “Dr King”. We weren’t at the Lorraine motel when Dr King was assassinated, we were around the corner, although we had stayed there many times because it was a Black-owned motel, so in the 60s it was the only place we could stay. We’d see Dr King every morning. He would come down to have breakfast and say, “How are you girls doing this morning?” He didn’t have to say anything: he was so powerful you would feel his presence. He called my father “Stay” and would go, “Stay. You gonna sing my song tonight?” His favourite song was Why Am I Treated So Bad, so we’d have to sing that every night at his meetings before he would get up to speak.
I read in the liner notes about the moment your father [Roebuck “Pops” Staples] handed you some lost tapes and told you: “Don’t lose this.” You did a wonderful job with them – do you have your own “lost tapes”? tommytacker
My father was on his sickbed and he called me upstairs and asked me to bring him the last music he had recorded and he said, “Mavis, don’t lose this.” But it wasn’t finished, so I asked Jeff Tweedy if he would help me finish this record of Pops’ last music. When my sister Yvonne and I went to the studio and heard Pops singing Friendship we just broke down. But it came out so beautiful. That’s why the album is called Don’t Lose This. Most of the stuff that I did was released, and if it wasn’t it was probably because it didn’t come out right or I didn’t like it. There isn’t a whole bunch of stuff but if the record company want to come out with it later, it’ll be all right with me.
Some of the Staple Singers … Pops, Cleotha, Mavis and Pervis in the late 1950s. Photograph: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
I first heard I’ll Take You There in third grade when a classmate brought in this treasured 45rpm. Have other listeners shared with you how the Staple Singers influenced them positively as young people? DabMaine
Yes, definitely. I love kids and it’s amazing to see so many at our shows these days. They get on the front row and sing along with me, and sometimes I get them on stage. I call them teenyboppers. I love it because I used to think that the young people weren’t interested in what we were singing about. But I found out different.
In my mind Stax Records was a true band of sisters and brothers pushing boundaries and creating magic, with a shared vision of art, liberty and righteousness. Is that the reality? Mr_202
It was a pleasure working at Stax because they had all these great people such as David Porter and Isaac Hayes. We called Otis Redding “the footballer” because he was so huge, but he was one beautiful spirit. They had a mixed [race] band in Booker T and the MG’s. In the early 60s, two white guys and two black guys working together was not supposed to happen, but in Stax no one looked at colour. Anybody could walk into your session and sit and listen. It was like a family and, now they’ve got a museum, a lot of teenyboppers can see Stax today.
‘I keep my head up’ … Staples and Hozier perform during Newport folk festival in 2019. Photograph: Mike Lawrie/Getty Images
Is this the darkest time you’ve lived through or am I foolish to believe it is? babylonfalling
It is pretty dark. There are some things going on in the US that are not pleasing to me, but I keep my head up. I turn on a light, you know, I don’t dwell on it. If someone needs me out there, I’ll be out there, but I leave that darkness out of my home and out of my life. You can’t let them bring you down.
Out of all the people you have worked with, who has been the most memorable? telboy1959
Oh my God. Everyone. I’m blessed to be able to do what I do and thankful that they would wanna work with me. I’ve had the best life in the world and I couldn’t ask for anything more. I’m a happy old girl.
Sad and Beautiful World is released on 7 November on Anti.
