March 2, 2015

O Glory! Pops Staples Was Magnificent—and Rockin’


The Staple Singers
Freedom Highway Complete – Recorded Live at Chicago’s New Nazareth Church
Legacy

Pops Staples
Don’t Lose This
dBpm/Anti-

What a monumental legacy Roebuck “Pops” Staples left behind! From the mid-1950s on, his family group, the Staple Singers, was a premier gospel act. In the ’70s, they scored a number of uplifting R&B hits, including “Respect Yourself” and “I’ll Take You There.” Up until his death in 2000, Pops Staples continued making compelling, moving music.

Freedom Highway Complete, recorded in April 1965, captures Pops and his kids, Mavis, Yvonne and Pervis, at the height of their testifying powers, electrifying a churchgoing audience the month after Dr. King’s history-changing marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. From the exuberant title track to the foot-stomping “Samson and Delilah,” it’s a thrilling concert, thanks to the interplay of the Staples’ robust voices, Pops’ shimmering, pithy guitar licks, and spirit-lifting rhythms. It’s magnificent—and rockin’!

Don’t Lose This collects 10 songs that Pops recorded in 1999 but never finished. Last year, daughter Mavis took the incomplete recordings to Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, who worked on her more recent solo albums, and together they turned the tracks into a proper album, adding voices and instrumentation. (If Tweedy took the liberty of mimicking Pops’ distinctive guitar in places, he did a great job.) Mavis’ rousing voice is prominent, but it’s still her dad’s show. His tender yet forceful singing on “Somebody Was Watching Me” and on Bob Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody” is sure to inspire. The album is a fitting memorial to this endearing genius.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

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And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

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