Listen/Download – The Staple Singers – Nobody’s Fault But Mine MP3
Listen/Download – The Staple Singers – I Wish I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again MP3
Greetings all.
I was recently gifted (in conjunction with Christmas) with the absolutely amazing Staple Singers boxed set, ‘Faith and Grace, A Family Journey 1953 – 1976’.
First released in 2015, and compiled by Joe McEwen, it is the first collection cover the Staples’ entire career, from their very first record in 1953 to their commercial heyday at Stax in the 1970s, with stops at VeeJay, Riverside, D-Town and Epic along the way.
Gospel has become a collectible genre among soul fans over the last ten years or so with some of the deeper cats – like Greg Belson – mining the depths for the soul, funk and even disco iterations of the genre.
While I have never collected gospel records in earnest (I still have a lot to learn), it is nearly impossible to listen to soul music from the classic era and not yearn to investigate the wellspring from which so many of its greatest practitioners came.
Gospel music is at least as big a contributor to what we know as soul music as was R&B, in both its style – brought forward by countless singers who spent their childhoods (and often adulthood) singing the music – and its repertoire, much of which made its way into the soul catalog via osmosis, theft and homage.
The mighty Staple singers are a perfect bridge for those with a taste for soul music who want to find a way into the gospel realm.
The group was in many sui generis, in that their approach to the genre was unusual (becoming even moreso as the years passed), with Roebuck ‘Pops’ Staples Delta blues inspired guitar style and Mavis Staples uniquely powerful voice.
They were deeply influential, inside and outside of gospel, and work as a touchstone to pure, gospel quartet singing, and socialy conscious soul music.
As a listener of music, I have always been more attuned to the overall sound, as opposed to lyrics, effected first by the feel of things, and the Staple Singers had a sound that was remarkable.
It’s not that elements of their music blend can’t be found in earlier performers. Pop Staples grew up near the Dockery Plantation in Mississippi and learned to play the guitar while listening to Charley Patton, Robert Johnson and Son House, and Mavis’s voice has echoes of both secular (Patton) and sanctified blues (Blind Willie Johnson). However nobody combined the sounds of the Delta and gospel harmony like the Staple Singers did.
Their sound – and it’s interesting to listen to how its power persisted through the different production styles over the years – was unique, spiritual (in every way) and at times almost ghostly, in its ability to carry the voices of the past into the present.
I’ve spent a great deal of time since Christmas listening, and relistening to ‘Faith and Grace’, and diving deep into the sound of the Staples’ music.
Though I was already familiar with much of the second half of the set (the late Riverside, Epic and Stax periods), the earlier recordings were a revelation.
To listen to their earliest recordings, like ‘It Rained Children’ (from 1953) and their first hit ‘Uncloudy Day’ (from 1956) and realize that Mavis’s booming, richly layered and masterfully controlled voice was coming from a teenager, verily boggles the mind. And it must be acknowledged that even that supreme instrument was only one component of the group’s sound. Pops’ high, keening voice, tremelo-soaked guitar, and the harmonies and call and response of Pervis, Cleotha and Yvonne (the line up changing frequently over the years) all came together to make something remarkable.
The two tracks I bring you today hail from the Staples 1965 and 1966 Epic LPs, ‘Amen!’ and ‘Why’, and are both included on ‘Faith and Grace, A Family Journey 1953 – 1976’.
The first, ‘Nobody’s Fault But Mine’ is a gospel standard that was first recorded by the aforementioned Blind Willie Johnson in 1927 as ‘It’s Nobody’s Fault But Mine’. It should also be familiar to listeners of Led Zeppelin as just one (particularly egregious) example of their thievery.
The Staples take advantage of a small-band backing to add a brisk, rolling propulsion to their version of the song, with Pops’ guitar edging right up to an almost rockabilly sound (a recurring motif in songs like ‘Swing Down Chariot’ and ‘I’m So Glad’), and his vocal in the lead, with response from his children.
The second tune, ‘I Wish I Could Hear My Mother Pray Again’ is another gospel chestnut, which was recorded over the years by a variety of performers, many of the coming from the white/country gospel sound. You can hear traces of that sound in the Staples’ version.
The astounding quality of the music on ‘Faith and Grace’ will blow away the most jaded listener, and certainly spur many of you to head out and find as many of the original releases as possible. There are a few omissions (I wish that they had included the Larry Williams produced reworking of ‘Why Am I Treated So Bad’) but there are so many great moments (including a couple of rare live recordings) that nobody outside of pedantic record collectors will find any reason to quibble with the selection.
So dig the sounds, and go out and find yourself a copy of this collection, and settle in for several hours of amazement.
I hope you dig it, and I’ll see you all on Wednesday.
Keep the faith
Larry
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PS Head over to Iron Leg too.
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