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"Like many in the civil rights movement, The Staple Singers drew on the spirituality and strength of the church to help gain social justice and to try to achieve equal rights," says Mavis. "With this record, I hope to get across the same feeling, the same spirit and the same message as we did then - and to hopefully continue to make positive changes. Things are better but we’re not where we need to be and we’ll never turn back."
Soul/gospel legend Mavis Staples recently completed work on We’ll Never Turn Back, the most personal and polemical album of her career. Set for April 24 release, the album was produced by Ry Cooder, and marks Mavis’ debut for Anti- Records.
We’ll Never Turn Back combines raw, emotional, contemporized versions of some of the freedom songs that provided the soundtrack to the civil rights movement of the 1950s/60s, along with other traditional songs, and new originals written by Mavis and Ry.
Soul music authority Rob Bowman (Soulsville USA: The Story of Stax Records) listened to We’ll Never Turn Back and had this to say:
"For over fifty years, Mavis Staples has been a national treasure, working her vocal magic on the highways and byways of gospel, folk and soul music. With both her family group, the Staple Singers, and as a solo artist in her own right she has helped to define much of what is righteous and soulful in American music. In the early 1960s, the Staple Singers began to work with Dr. Martin Luther King singing in support of the Civil Rights movement.
"With We’ll Never Turn Back, Mavis Staples has come full circle, singing songs that were seminal to a movement and time that helped form her as an artist. Alongside songs that were inextricably part of the Civil Rights movement, many of them associated with the Freedom Singers, Mavis co-wrote the title track with producer and guitarist extraordinaire Ry Cooder, sings a Cooder original, "I'll Be Rested," and opens the CD with a cover of bluesman J.B. Lenoir's "Down in Mississippi," connecting the disc to her own roots down South.
For many artists, such a project would be an exercise in recreating period pieces in much the same way that museums present the past as freeze-frame tableaux. Mavis takes a different path, personalizing the record, ad libbing spoken and sung commentary on several songs, connecting the lyrics to her own life, her family and, perhaps most tellingly, to the very real issues of today. Ry Cooder with the help of his son Joaquin Cooder, drummer Jim Keltner, bassist Mike Elizando, many of the original Freedom Singers and South African choir Ladysmith Black Mambazo, creates soundscapes for Mavis' deep-in-the-well, heart felt vocals that redefines much of the material while simultaneously casting it in a rich, vibrant deeply rooted past.
We’ll Never Turn Back may have started off as an homage to a period in which everyday citizens exhibited incredible bravery and, in the process, wrought incredible changes to American society. It ended up being a deeply personal account of Mavis' life from childhood days in Mississippi, through the Civil Rights era and on up to her current anger and indignation over the fact that many Americans are still treated as second class citizens. The net result is perhaps her greatest life work and one of the most moving albums this writer has ever heard. If there is any justice, We’ll Never Turn Back will inspire many of us to find bravery in our own hearts, conquer the rampant apathy that blankets our society and take action to right the wrongs in our present day society."
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Soul and gospel legend Mavis Staples possesses one of the most recognizable and treasured voices in contemporary music. From her early days sharing lead vocals with her groundbreaking family group, The Staple Singers, to her powerful solo recordings, Mavis Staples is an inspirational force in modern popular culture and music.
In September 2006, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. Mavis was named a National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) National Heritage Fellow. The Fellowship is the country's highest honor in the folk and traditional arts. Mavis's father, Roebuck 'Pops' Staples, received a Heritage Fellowship in 1998, and this year marks the first time that a daughter and father will have been honored individually with a fellowship. Awarded since 1982, other past recipients of the Heritage Fellowship include B.B. King, John Lee Hooker, Michael Doucet, Shirley Caesar, Albertina Walker, Doc Watson, and Bill Monroe.
A 40-year-plus veteran of the music scene - a Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductee and one of VH1's '100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll' - Mavis is responsible for blazing a rhythm & blues trail while never relinquishing her gospel roots. Her voice has influenced artists from Bob Dylan to Prince (who dubbed her "the epitome of soul") and she has appeared with everyone from the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Bill Cosby, Presidents Kennedy, Carter, and Clinton, to Janis Joplin, Pink Floyd, Santana and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers and has recorded with Bob Dylan, Los Lobos, Aretha Franklin, Marty Stuart and many others.
Mavis was honored, along with Jerry Lee Lewis, Janis Joplin, Led Zeppelin and the Carter Family, with a 2005 GRAMMY Lifetime Achievement Award for her work with the Staple Singers. She was nominated for a 2005 GRAMMY for a performance with Dr. John and performed with Kanye West, John Legend, and the Blind Boys Of Alabama on the 47th Annual GRAMMY Awards telecast.
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