I'll Take You There

Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March up Freedom's Highway

Greg Kot

• Publisher: Scribner
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN:
  9781451647877
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music Biographies

“A biography that will send readers back to the music of Mavis and the Staple Singers with deepened appreciation and a renewed spirit of discovery” (Kirkus Reviews, starred review)—from the acclaimed music journalist and author featured prominently in the new HBO documentary Mavis!

This is the untold story of living legend Mavis Staples—lead singer of the Staple Singers and a major figure in the music that shaped the civil rights era. One of the most enduring artists of popular music, Mavis and her talented family fused gospel, soul, folk, and rock to transcend racism and oppression through song. Honing her prodigious talent on the Southern gospel circuit of the 1950s, Mavis and the Staple Singers went on to sell more than 30 million records, with message-oriented soul music that became a soundtrack to the civil rights movement—inspiring Martin Luther King, Jr. himself.

Critically acclaimed biographer and Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot cuts to the heart of Mavis Staples’s music, revealing the intimate stories of her sixty-year career. From her love affair with Bob Dylan, to her creative collaborations with Prince, to her recent revival alongside Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, this definitive account shows Mavis as you’ve never seen her before. I’ll Take You There was written with the complete cooperation of Mavis and her family. Readers will also hear from Prince, Bonnie Raitt, David Byrne, and many others whose lives have been influenced by Mavis’s talent.

Filled with never-before-told stories, this fascinating biography illuminates a legendary singer and group during a historic period of change in America. “Ultimately, Kot depicts the endurance of Mavis Staples and her family’s music as an inspiration, a saga that takes us, like the song that inspired this book’s name, to a place where ain’t nobody crying” (The Washington Post).

Table of contents

• Cover
• Dedication
• Prologue: “Freedom Highway” in sequined flats
• 1. Voices in the Mississippi night
• 2. Hard time killing floor
• 3. “If I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again”
• 4. “This May Be the Last Time”
• 5. “Gospel in a blues key”
• 6. “Uncloudy Day”
• 7. A guitar, an amplifier, and a gun
• 8. “That’s the guy who sings ‘Blue Suede Shoes’”
• 9. “God was in the room”
• 10. Sam Cooke and Aretha
• 11. Modern folksingers
• 12. For the love of Bob Dylan
• 13. “If he can preach it, we can sing it”
• 14. “Freedom Highway”
• 15. “Why Am I Treated So Bad?”
• 16. “Mavis, you want a hit?”
• 17. The Stax era begins
• 18. “When Will We Be Paid?”
• 19. Mahalia passes the torch
• 20. “You talk to me like I’m a kid”
• 21. “I Have Learned to Do Without You”
• 22. Muscle Shoals soul
• 23. Back to the motherland
• 24. “Cleo, you like brownies?”
• 25. “Respect Yourself”
• 26. “I’ll Take You There”
• 27. Wattstax
• 28. “They don’t know which category to put us in”
• 29. A family tragedy
• 30. Stax crumbles
• 31. “Let’s Do It Again”
• 32. “I was never more scared in my life”
• 33. “The Last Waltz”
• 34. Desperate times
• 35. “Slippery People”
• 36. Prince and the Holy Ghost moment
• 37. Pops, the second act
• 38. “Whatever you do, don’t give up”
• 39. “My skin started moving on my bones”
• 40. “I’ll be the history”
• 41. Hope at the Hideout
• 42. “You Are Not Alone”
• 43. “When the gates swing open, let me in”
• Photographs
• Mavis Staples in Conversation with Greg Kot
• Acknowledgments
• About Greg Kot
• Discography
• Notes on the source material
• Index
• Copyright