| Roebuck Staples b.
December 28, 1914 / Winona Mississippi Singer / Songwriter |
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| ROEBUCK
"POPS" STAPLES African-American Gospel/Blues musician, Dolton, Illinois The gospel and blues music of African-American artists that developed in the late nineteenth century and early in this century are precursors of most of America's popular music. The blues artists drew from everyday life as a source of themes and inspiration in composing their songs. Early gospel artists also made use of contemporary events in their compositions. The blues artists often sang of personal experiences, interpersonal relationships, and the glaring contradictions of life under the harsh system of racial segregation. Gospel artists often drew on these same sources to elucidate the timeless wisdom and morals of the Bible. While both traditions have shared some common themes, musical forms, and techniques, there are differences that have made it difficult for an artist to play both styles of music and be recognized in both circles. Nevertheless, throughout the history of the gospel and blues music there have been artists such as Blind Willie Johnson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Reverend Gary Davis who succeeded in melding these forms together. Born in Winona, Mississippi in 1914, Roebuck "Pops" Staples drew from both of the gospel and blues traditions to forge a sound that transcends the stylistic divide between these two forms of music. Winona is located in the Mississippi Delta, a region of United States where many influential blues musicians began composing, performing, and developing a distinct style of blues. From his early years Pops recalls listening to acapella singers in the churches and singing gospel songs at his home with his family and neighbors. As a teenager he took up the guitar, inspired by legendary blues artists such as Charlie Patton, Barbecue Bob, and Big Bill Broonzy. In later years, Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf would became major influences on his style. Although he admired these artists, Pops developed his guitar style to accompany religious music. He remained drawn to religious music and sang with a local gospel group, the Golden Trumpets.
Pops took his duties as a leader seriously and sought to develop music that appealed to a broad audience, while staying in the tradition. During the late 1950s and early 1960s as the Civil Rights movement gained momentum, their repertoire reflected these social changes. They sang songs inspired by the struggle with positive and progressive messages. This resulted in the group being courted by leaders of the Folk Revival, and they performed at major folk festivals of that period and are credited with being the first African-American group to record Bob Dylan's tunes. Although this growth may have been controversial to some, Pops and the Staples maintained a distinct sound that was rooted in the traditions of gospel and blues music. After the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Staple Singers released the song "A Long Walk to DC" in memory of the slain civil rights leader. His daughter Yvonne replaced Pervis who entered the military in 1971. The Staples had their biggest commercial success in the 1970s with "Respect Yourself" (1971), "I'll Take You There" (1974 -- selling three million copies), and "Let's Do It Again" (1976). Pops and the Staple Singers have influenced a wide range of rhythm-and-blues and rock performers from Aretha Franklin and Gladys Knight to the Band.
National Endowment for the Arts The Staple Singers have been called "God's greatest hit-makers." Steeped in the music of the church, this singing family from Mississippi crossed into the pop mainstream without compromising their gospel roots. Behind the leadership of patriarch Roebuck "Pops" Staples, the Staple Singers have left an imprint of soulful voices, social activism and religious conviction across the decades since the release of "Uncloudy Day" in 1956. The clan's musical signatures have been Pop Staples' gospel-based songwriting and bluesy guitar, Mavis Staples' rich, raspy vocals and the supple, ringing harmonies of Cleotha and Yvonne Staples. All three women are the daughters of Pops and Oceola Staples. Until 1969, their son Pervis also belonged to the group, which has been configured as a quartet for half a century, with Pops and Mavis joined by Cleotha, Yvonne and/or Pervis. By force of conviction and the rollicking, rhythm & blues underpinnings of their music, the gospel-based Staples cracked the Top Forty eight times during the first half of the Seventies. Two of their singles reached Number One: the funky, inspirational "I'll Take You There," which was the highlight of their tenure on Stax Records, and "Let's Do It Again," a film-soundtrack song recorded for Curtis Mayfield's Custom label. Beyond these Top Forty watermarks, the Staple Singers have enjoyed a lengthy history that dates back to the late Forties. It all began with Pops Staples, who was born on December 28, 1915, in Winona, Mississippi, where he grew up hearing both church and blues music. In 1931, he joined the Gospel Trumpets, a local quartet. After relocating his family to Chicago in 1936, Pops became a member of the Trumpet Jubilees. While Oceola Staples worked evenings, Pops kept the brood occupied by teaching them songs, and this diversion became their lifelong occupation.
Moving to the New York-based Riverside label, the Staple Singers moved from outright gospel to a more folk-oriented sound, recording such contemporary, message-oriented songs as Woody Guthrie's "This Land" and Bob Dylan's "Blowin' in the Wind," as well as a highly regarded Christmas album, The Twenty-fifth Day of December. Their late-Sixties tenure on Epic Records would further move them in this direction, with the Staples recording protest songs (such as Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth") and inspirational material ("Marching Up Jesus' Highway") in a folk-gospel style, saluting and furthering the spirit of Martin Luther King before and after his death. The Staple Singers found commercial success at the Memphis-based Stax label, where their message-oriented material was underscored in a funkier setting. Their run of Top Forty hits was ignited in 1971 with "Heavy Makes You Happy," while the album Beattitude: Respect Yourself, reached #19. In April 1972, another milestone was reached when "I'll Take You There" simultaneously topped the pop and R&B charts. A move to Warner Bros. at mid-decade resulted in their second #1 hit, "Let's Do It Again," a disco-era favorite. The Staple Singers, who shortened their name to the Staples, remained at Warner Bros. until the end of the Seventies. (As a side note, one of the Staples' sidemen, guitarist George Benson, launched a successful solo career at Warner Bros.) While at Stax, Mavis and Pops Staples recorded solo albums, and they continued to do so for Warner Bros. and other labels. In the late Eighties, Prince signed Mavis Staples to his Paisley Park label and produced, played on and wrote much of the material on two memorable solo discs, Time Waits for No One and The Voice. In 1994, Pops Staples' Father Father won a Grammy for the Best Contemporary Blues Album. -- SOURCE: http://www.capitalentertainment.com/client/ss.html The Man with a Message Remembering Pops Staples When the father of the First Family of Gospel passed away in December 2000 at the age of 84, he left us with a legacy of great music and good will by Will Seeley
In a lot of little ways, Pops was kind of like Louis Armstrong. He was an innovator whose innovation has become so much a part of the modern music vocabulary, and a singer whose eventual journey into more accessible waters was loudly denounced by purists. His career spanned five decades, taking him from a dirt-poor childhood to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and appearances around the world. And like Armstrong, that other famous Pops, Pops Staples was such an identifiable musical personality that it’s almost inconceivable that such a voice could pop up again today, when everything seems to be so cookie-cutter. How can you describe his voice? Grainy and light, with a little bit of a slur, the perfect counter-balance to daughter Mavis’ hurricane-force declamations. His voice is maybe not what you’d call a “good” voice, and he generally played it very straight and bluesy when he sang, a direct descendant of the great country blues singers of the thirties. But he had something undeniably magical, something intimate and inviting. It’s impossible to listen to him sing and not feel like you’re his friend. His guitar playing was the first time blues guitar had ever
been used in gospel music, and his vibrato-laden, loping blues lines are almost
as distinctive as his voice. He not only sang and played guitar, he wrote many
of the group’s songs, and his vision propelled his family from humble concerts
on the gospel circuit to being known as the “first family of gospel” and on
into the wider waters of pop music. By the time he was persuaded to release some
solo records in the 1990s, he had the help of some pretty famous friends, like
Bonnie Raitt and Ry Cooder, and he finally made it to the Grammies, winning in
1995 for Father, Father. Pops was born a sharecropper’s son in Winona, Mississippi, in December of 1915. He began singing in a local gospel quartet called the Golden Trumpets at the tender age of 16, in 1931. While he was a kid, Pops was exposed to the twin musical poles of his life, the a capella gospel singing in the church, and the delta blues of people like Ma Rainey, Barbeque Bob and Big Bill Broonzy. He was already playing blues guitar as a teenager, and legend has it that he even jammed with Robert Johnson. By the time he was 21 he and his wife Oceola decided to escape his sharecropping fate in Mississippi and they picked up the budding family and moved to Chicago. In Chicago, Pops worked in the steel mills and doing construction, but he quickly found another gospel group to sing with, called the Trumpet Jubilees. He officially formed the Staple Singers in 1948, bringing together his daughters Cleo and Mavis and son Pervis, first playing at local churches, and then moving out onto the road, performing in New Orleans and Jackson, Mississippi. Pops had to form his own label, called Royal Records, to put out the group’s first recording, a 78rpm single (“These They Are”, b/w “Faith and Grace”), released in 1953. Their next recording was for local Chicago label United Records, and then the more prestigious Vee-Jay label came calling. It was on Vee-Jay that the Staples had their first taste of success, with the song “Uncloudy Day”. At this time, Pops was still working his day job, but when Mavis, his youngest daughter, finished high school, he quit his job and devoted his time to finding work for the group. This included a widening vision of how to take his message to the masses, which became intertwined with the civil rights movement, as it gained momentum in the late fifties and early sixties. Pops’ solution to gaining a broader audience was to mix his belief in the teachings of Dr. Martin Luther King with “message” songs that preached a moral way of life without specifically mentioning god.
But the final move to pop stardom came when they signed to Stax, the Memphis soul powerhouse, where producer Steve Cropper and later Al Bell helped Pops infuse his folk-gospel with soul and R&B and funk, even enlisting Booker T. and the MGs as the backing band for their first two Stax albums, Soul Folk in Action and We’ll Get Over. The gospel purists had already been outraged by this point, but the success of the Staples’ new sound and subsequent radio play on mainstream soul radio was the nail in the coffin, as far as the hard-core gospel community was concerned. It didn’t matter to them that Pops and his family were retaining a positive message and exposing the world to what was still an essentially gospel sound, just with a more secular rhythm. During their tenure at Stax, from 1968 to 1974, the Staples had their biggest hits. “Respect Yourself” reached #2 on the R&B charts and #14 on the pop charts in December of 1971, and “I’ll Take You There” hit #1 on both charts in June of 1972, staying in the top slot on the R&B chart for four weeks. “If You’re Ready (Come Go With Me)” was #1 on the R&B charts for three weeks in October of 1973, and got all the way to #9 on the pop charts. Their next hit was for Curtis Mayfield’s Curtom label, in 1975, from the soundtrack to the Bill Cosby movie Let’s Do It Again. The song “Let’s Do It Again” hit number one on the R&B charts twice in December of 1975. In 1976, Pops and Mavis joined The Band on stage for their farewell concert, which was filmed by Martin Scorcese and became known as The Last Waltz. They sang on The Band’s hit “The Weight”, which they had already covered for their 1968 album Soul Folk in Action, on Stax. The Staples were also immortalized on film in Wattstax, the film of the 1972 concert benefiting the victims of the Watts riots. Things were quiet for the Staples Singers until 1984, when their cover of the Talking Heads song “Slippery People” charted at #22 on the R&B charts and #109 on the pop charts. In 1986, Pops returned the favor, playing the voodoo priest in head Talking Head David Byrne’s offbeat comedy True Stories. The 90s finally brought about solo careers for Pops and Mavis, who signed to Prince’s Paisley Park label and released two critically acclaimed albums. The beauty of Pops’ two solo albums, 1992’s Peace to the Neighborhood, and 1995’s Father, Father, is how expansive they are. The possibility was there, since he was the guiding force of the Staple Singers, for him to simply soldier on in that same vein. But he ably assumes full vocal duty, whereas before he had gradually been relegated to supporting Mavis’ increasingly strong personality as the lead singer, and his gentle spirit and unmistakable personality come forth in the sparkling 90s production values of the two discs. They bypass the funk of his seventies work and the slickness of his 80s work, and take him right back home, to blues and gospel, filled with the wisdom of life.
His Grammy-winning follow-up, Father, Father, follows pretty much the same format, featuring many Pops originals, as did Peace to the Neighborhood, as well as well-chosen cover tunes, including songs by Curtis Mayfield and Bob Dylan. Some of the songs on both of these discs could be called “repertory” for Pops, as they enjoyed previous lives with the Staple Singers. A standout on this one definitely has to be “Jesus Is Going to Make Up (My Dying Bed)”, with it’s heartful duet between Pops and Ry Cooder’s slide guitar. Again, Mavis, Cleo and Yvonne make an appearance, and the sound is further fleshed out by the Paramount Singers, a gospel group that tunes in perfectly with Pops’ open vibe. The mere involvement of Ry Cooder in these solo discs says a lot about Pops’ place in our pop culture, as well as saying quite a bit about him as a guitarist. Cooder is someone who has made a career of seeking out undersung, perhaps forgotten, world class musicians and bringing them to the public stage, in some cases, including this one, for the second time. His other credits include the recent resuscitation of the careers of the great Cuban singers of the Buena Vista Social Club, work with the great Hawaiian guitarist Gabby Pahinui, and a major popularization of the African guitarist Ali Farka Toure. It is clearly Cooder’s gift to realize when someone deserves to make a record, and to do what he can to help that process along. Pops was well into his retirement when Cooder came into the picture, and the second wind he helped engender kept Staples going until his death last month, following a concussion he received after falling in his house. The Staples Singers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, and in 1998, Pops was awarded the National Heritage Fellowship. These things recognize that Pops was a national treasure, which is exactly what he was. When I was lucky enough to see Mavis perform a few years ago at the Great American Music Hall, people in the audience wanted to know how Pops was doing, and Mavis’ love for him, as well as the audience’s love for him, was clearly evident. He reached us, through what he called “affirmative music,” the only kind of music he was ever capable of. “Affirmative music was just a thought I had to myself,” he said. His music will continue to affirm even though he’s gone now. Chicago Sun-Times `Pops' Staples dies at age 85 BY DAVE HOEKSTRA STAFF REPORTER The journey of Roebuck "Pops" Staples began on a humble plantation in Drew, Miss. Along the way, he became one of the most eminent voices in American soul, blues, gospel and folk music. Mr. Staples died Tuesday morning in his south suburban Dolton home. He was 85. Mr. Staples was the patriarch of the Chicago-based Staple Singers, which featured his daughters Mavis, Cleo and Yvonne. The group had mid-1970s pop-soul hits such as "Respect Yourself," "Heavy Makes You Happy" and "I'll Take You There." The family was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year. In 1998, Mr. Staples was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. With a haunting tremolo sound from his Telecaster guitar and honey-soaked vocals that held the promise of a new morning, Mr. Staples set the group's empathetic tone. Every time the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. traveled with the Staple Singers, he requested Mr. Staples' swampy sermonette "Why? (Am I Treated So Bad)." "Many singers are indifferent to the politics of our time," said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, a friend of the Staples family for 40 years. "Pops and his family turned political pain and agony and put it to music. They never lost their joy, they never sang with a heavy heart. Pops was a real piece of the culture of the 20th century." Mr. Staples was born on the Dockery plantation, about 100 miles from Memphis, Tenn. The youngest of 14 children, Mr. Staples would join his entire family in a sing-along to unwind after a long day of picking cotton under the steamy Mississippi sun. The colorful characters hanging around Dockery's General Store made an impression on Mr. Staples, including legendary rural bluesman Charlie Patton. Each time Roebuck and his brother Sears (yes, they were Sears & Roebuck) visited the store, Mr. Staples would plunk down 50 cents as a down payment for a guitar. He bought his first guitar for $5. "I took that guitar and learned how to play the blues and a few uptempo numbers," Mr. Staples told me in 1992. "So when I left the blues [in the 1940s] to go with my children into gospel, I still had that blues feel. I couldn't get that out of my system. That's why we're not like all other gospel singers." In 1990, Pops Staples Park was dedicated among the old oak and pecan trees of Drew. It serves as the site of the Pops Staples Park Festival, which featured John Fogerty, former Creedence Clearwater Revival frontman, in its inaugural season. "Pops' guitar is the earliest guitar sound I remember," Fogerty said Tuesday. "We had a rhythm-and-blues radio station out of Oakland, and on Sundays, they'd play gospel. That's where I heard Pops. "The sound of that guitar was--and still is--one of the spookiest things I've ever heard. When I met Pops in Drew, I told him there were a few of my songs that had his guitar sound all over them, such as `Born on the Bayou.' He was much too modest to think he influenced anybody." John Lee Hooker, Mr. Staples' 80-year-old compatriot, said, "Pops was a very, very good man and a great musician. We can think back on what a wonderful person he was. He led a great life and made a lot of people happy." Mr. Staples and his wife, Oceola, who died in 1987 after 53 years of marriage, came to Chicago in 1925. For 50 cents an hour, Mr. Staples got his first job shoveling fertilizer at the stockyards. The Staples family never even had a backyard until the early 1960s, when they bought their first home, a brown, brick four-flat at 89th and Langley. On every Fourth of July, Mr. Staples and his family hosted a neighborhood barbecue. Soul singer Gene ("Duke of Earl") Chandler was an annual guest, as was gospel singer Albertina Walker, and the late gospel great Mahalia Jackson, who would buy a new sundress for the occasion. Mr. Staples' final solo album was "Father, Father," for which he won a 1995 Grammy Award. He was also nominated for a Grammy for his 1993 solo album, "Peace to the Neighborhood," which featured Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne. Mr. Staples had been working on a Staple Singers album due out early next year. The tracks were recorded in Chicago, Memphis and Waukegan. Mr. Staples finished his parts earlier this year. "He sang quite a few tracks," Mavis said. "He started [in 1997], before he got his ear infection and [continued] while he had Bell's palsy." One of Mr. Staples' favorite new tracks was the traditional gospel song "Better Home." Through tears, Mavis sang, "I have started out/to find a better home . . ." She said, "I think that's what we'll call the album. He's found a better home now." Besides his daughters and son Pervis, Mr. Staples is survived by 13 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Funeral services, which are pending, will be at the Trinity United Church of Christ, 400 W. 95th St. ADDITIONAL LINKS:
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Like
many people who sought a better life than what sharecropping offered,
Pops and his wife moved the family to Chicago in 1936. There he took
jobs in the meat packing industry, and later he worked in the steel
mills and in construction. During this period he performed with the
Trumpet Jubilees gospel group and continued to play guitar. In 1948,
he formed the Staple Singers with his daughters Cleotha, Mavis, and
son Pervis. They began singing at home and then in local churches.
Pops says of the early years, "We just wanted to have music in
the house, that's all." Their first jobs on the road took them to
New Orleans and then to Jackson, Mississippi. With encouragement from
his wife Oceola, Pops and his family continued to work as a gospel
group. The group first recorded in 1953 and had their first success
with the song "Uncloudy Day," released in 1957. Pops also
recorded Alex Bradford's "Too Close" as a solo during this
period, accentuating the song with his blues-influenced guitar style.
However, during this time Pops continued to work his regular job and
maintain a settled home life for his family. After his youngest
daughter Mavis finished high school, Pops began to pursue work for the
group on a full time basis. As the group perfected their distinct
sound based on vocal harmonies and on Pops' guitar, they became known
as "the First Family of Gospel."
Pops
began to pursue a solo career in the 1980s drawing on his skills as a
guitarist, singer, and composer. With a keen sense of observation he
is addressing through music the social ills he sees crippling
communities across the nation and the world. He has released two solo
albums -- "Peace in the Neighborhood" and "Father
Father," the latter winning a Grammy award in 1994. Through his
music he has continued the gospel/blues tradition of offering a
message that is positive, righteous, and spiritual.
The
family sang at churches around the upper Midwest, became regulars on a
Sunday radio show and cut their first recording, a 78 rpm single on
Pops' own Royal label, in 1953. Another record for a local label
("Won't You Sit Down," on United) led to a contract with
Chicago-based Vee Jay Records. The Staple Singers stayed at Vee Jay from
1956-1962, a tenure that included their breakthrough single, "Uncloudy
Day."
Can
you think of another human being quite like Roebuck “Pops” Staples? Someone
with the same gentility, gentleness, and yet extreme moral force, all brought to
bear on music? He did it in such a significant, impact-ful way, too. It’s a
little hard to believe in these days of violent and misogynistic music that a
song about respecting yourself could have raced up both the pop and R&B
charts simultaneously, or that a “I’ll Take You There” could have been at
#1 on those same charts at the same time (June, 1972). People loved Pops and his
kids, collectively known as the Staple Singers (family name: Staples; group
name: Staple). We all still love Pops, and, now that he’s gone, we miss him.
When
he signed the group to New York’s Riverside label in 1962, he found a label
that was willing to play it the way he wanted. Among other things, the Staple
Singers recorded Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind” on their 1963 album
This Land, both earning them the distinction of being the first African
Americans to record a Bob Dylan tune, and also signaling a major trend in their
music to come, of adapting other people’s songs. One of the best examples of
the gospel Staples Singers on CD dates from this era, though: the disc is called
Great Day, and it’s a must for any record collection.
By 1965, the Staples were on Epic, a subsidiary of Columbia, and their cover of
Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth” got all the way up to number
66 on the Billboard pop charts. After the assassination of Dr. King, Pops and
his children paid tribute with their song “A Long Walk to DC”.
Peace
to the Neighborhood was nominated for a Grammy, and it remains one of his most
potent all-around statements. The legend is that both Bonnie Raitt and Ry Cooder
were instrumental in coaxing him to record the disc, and Jackson Browne showed
up to lend his support to the project. Pops’ swampy, vibrato Fender guitar
dominates the sound, which is fleshed out by a full band, including Jim Keltner
on drums. And, as if that weren’t enough, Mavis, Cleo and Yvonne also make an
appearance, obviously glad to be there. The result is an undersung classic, full
of folksy charm and low-key spirit, just like the man himself.
