Mavis Staples - We'll Never Turn Back
|
List Price: Our Price: $11.48 You Save: $6.50 (36%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $4.00 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for We'll Never Turn Back
Free Music Review: Why slot this into a narrow category? This is, simply, greatness
Hit: 5 Stars
If you're of a certain age, this CD is an invitation to time-travel back to the 1960s. Not the `60s of war protest. Or the `60s of sex, drugs and music. This is the `60s that came before that, when Bob Dylan was too young to shave, and Southern blacks stood up to fire hoses, and white kids rushed South to stand and die with them. Freedom. Equality. "Black and white together." That long ago, oh so innocent time.
I try not to go back there. It's too depressing. As with so many issues, my generation made a promise and kept about half of it. And the result is that for all the "progress" that's been made, not a single one of us would trade our troubles to be poor and black in rural Mississippi.
So let's go to the music. Roebuck "Pops" Staples was Bob Dylan when Dylan was still Zimmerman --- from the earliest days of the Civil Rights Movement, his lyrics thundered from the mountain like Martin Luther King's sermons. And his music was irresistible. Pops wrote songs that, along with his stinging guitar, made you want to jump up to testify with your body. And in his daughter Mavis, he had an incomparable asset: a gospel shouter with the firepower of Aretha Franklin.
To hear the Staple Singers was to know that there wasn't anybody who would turn you `round. That it's a slow train, but it's definitely moving on. That like a tree planted by the water we shall not be moved.
Now Mavis Staples has revisited that music. And the dozen songs she's selected for "We'll Never Turn Back," make for the most passionate CD of her long career. To hear them is to be wrenched from the present to her childhood in Mound Bayou, Mississippi:"Every Sunday we would go to church, And this church --- a little wooden church up on the hill, no organist, no piano, no music and when you sang, you would hear feet patting on that wooden floor and people clapping their hands --- this church had such a good sound. Makes you move, you know? Because it has Soul in it, the spirit of the people."
If you don't listen too closely, here's your smart choice for the gospel purchase of the year. But why slot this into a narrow category? The producer is Ry Cooder, and there hasn't been someone as sensitive to ethnic music at the controls since the glory days of Atlantic and Stax. So "We'll Never Turn Back" is not just great gospel --- it's also a fantastic soul CD. And, with "99 and ½," it offers a dance cut that could give even a bigot visions of three hundred million Americans jiving to glory.
But this is much more than archival music enjoying brilliant production. It's a blunt attack on all the racism that endures. The day this CD was released, I read an article about health --- or lack of it --- in Mississippi. This is a state with the highest infant-mortality rate in America. More teen pregnancies than any other state. And improvement isn't likely. When Haley Barbour, former Chairman of the Republican National Committee, became Governor in 2004, he promised to cut Medicaid. He has succeeded; 54,000 non-elderly Mississippi residents --- most of them children --- were removed from Medicaid in the 2005 and 2006 fiscal years.
Mavis Staples sings bluntly about politicians and their lies, about promises broken and justice denied. She names the martyrs. And she doesn't tolerate dissent: This is, she says, what I've seen with my own eyes.
The ultimate greatness of this CD is that it acknowledges hardship but refuses to submit to it. The music's so strong and her voice is so thrilling you really feel there's an inevitability to the cause of equality. And if you doubt that, there's no way to refute her faith. "This joy I have - the world didn't give it to me," Mavis Staples has said. Believe it.
Free Music Review: Dignity
Hit: 5 Stars
Whenever a friend assails me for not liking rap or hip-hop, after I explain my loathing for the inherent violence and mysogyny, I tell them it comes down to one word, one concept, one approach toward Life itself: Dignity.
If there were ever a woman who embodied that quality and virtue it is Mavis Staples. For those of us of a certain age, we would remember the subject matter of this collection of songs as we lived through them. For the rest of you, you must remember that there was a time in North America, where life was not a whole lot different than it was in South Africa for anyone of colour. American aparthied was as pernicious as its Afrikaner cousin. This was not about snitchin (what the f is wrong with a society that enables its own murderers to continue to fester and breed?). It was about something slightly more fundamental: voting rights, housing rights, education rights, the bloody right to drink from whatever water fountain struck your fancy and wash your clothes in any laundry you chose. Simple stuff, actually. But stuff more to the bone about life than what passes for indignant entitlement today.
Again, if you were of a certain time, you would have had the notion that races could work together to correct an injustice institutionalized by a tradition written into a Constitution that supposedly was a great framework for, well, if not genocide, at least enslavement and freedom for the privileged. This collaborative effort to undue said institutions sometime took to the road across bridges, in concert halls, at voting booths, and a world changed. Strange fruit hung from trees, too many bodies floated downstream, places of worship became incinerators, but still the change came.
The Staples family were an integral part of that effort. In this remarkable selection of songs, Mavis Staples sings of her family's efforts, her own commitments, the sanctity of the martyrs who gave their lives down in Mississippi. Their eyes were clearly on the prize. Would that communities today could draw back the addictive blinders, remove the impediments that poverty constructs, and never turn back from the goal at the end of it all: family, peace with one's Creator, respect for each other. Dignity.
The music throughout this collection is the work of Mavis and Ry Cooder, and apart from a naft drum machine and odd computer on "99 & 1/2", the arrangements are so sympathetically on the money that the songs remind you of the joy of music that is made by hand, not sampled and beatboxed. This music has the presence and grace of religion. It is a record to humble you before higher virtues than self-absorption. It is the music in the heart and soul of a woman who was a true hero of civil rights, and who found her strength in her family and in her devotion to her God. Imagine, religion as a cause for salvation, for bringing people together instead of division and blowing them assunder!
Long ago, maybe a good decade or more after the key battles of the Civil Rights movement had been won, Pops, Mavis and their siblings assembled witha group of Canadian musicians and a lone singer from Arkansas and sang about a trip to Nazareth, the people they met there, and the weight they all carried. When Mavis cried "You put the load right on me!" she was right, and she was righteous enough to carry it. This is her account of that journey.
Record of the year, and maybe record for this millenium.
Free Music Review: A Must Buy Work
Hit: 5 Stars
Mavis Staples says of her early days singing with the Staple Singers: "When we started our family group, The Staple Singers, we started out mostly singing in churches in the south. Pops saw Dr. Martin Luther King speak in 1963 and from then we started to broaden our musical vision beyond just gospel sings. Pops told us, "I like this man. I like his message. And if he can preach it, we can sing it."
This album focuses on songs in that spirit. The songs take us back to the 1960s, but they remain relevant today. Indeed, Staples says: "With this record, I hope to get across the same feeling, the same spirit and the same message as we did with the Staple Singers--and to hopefully continue to make positive changes."
The backing group includes some estimable veterans, such as Ry Cooder and Jim Keltner. "Down in Mississippi" features good rhythm and is well and expressively sung. The focus of this song is the problems in Mississippi, including blacks being able to drink only at water fountains labeled "For colored only." The story of the singer helping to integrate Mississippi and the pride her grandmother feels in her.
"We Shall not Be Moved" begins with the repetitive phrase "We shall not be moved." Each verse, a new line is added and the cumulative effect is profound. Key lines:
"We shall not be moved
Like a tree planted by the water
We shall not be moved
The union is behind us
We shall not be moved
We're fighting for our freedom"
The power of repetition, propelled by the smooth and expressive voice of Staples makes this a riveting tune. The beat is simple and instrumentation is spare.
"In the Mississippi River" tells the tale of Civil Rights activists being thrown into the Mississippi River. Key line:
"Into the river they go,
They don't get out alive."
The backing vocals weave together with Mavis Staples' voice to powerful effect. One fragment remains in my memory, as the agents of death noted that killing these people "ain't no crime."
Finally, as one additional example, "We'll Never Turn Back."
"We've been mute and we've been scorned
We've been talked about. . . .
But we'll never turn back
Until we walk in peace."
A simple song, but with a powerful message, well sung by Staples.
This is a wonderful, powerful CD that hearkens back to the grim days of the 1960s, when the forces of reaction and racism met the voice of equality and civil rights. The songs testify to what was at stake and the price sometimes paid for fighting for equality (note the roll call of martyrs and those "who put their lives on the front line and died just trying to live and breathe" in "I'll Be Rested"). A must buy recording, in my view.
Free Music Review: Took A Couple Years But Finaly Get It
Hit: 5 Stars
I first purchased this album the day it came out and,upon listening to it on the way home decided to toss it aside and let it collect dust. It was not because I didn't like it but it seemed like there was so much gloomy,dark sounding music coming my way during this time and because there was so much hype in the press about the "relevence" of this album it was only natural I'd be a little let down anyway-that commonly happpens. So four years later I decided to give it a listen and see how it impacted me now. First off it's important to note that this album is firmly the domain of a fully mature Mavis Staples and not the youthful soul shouter of her classic days with the Staple Singers. She sounds like herself vocally but her interpretations have a heavy,craggy world weariness about them that's quite appropriate for the kind of album this is. Produced by Ry Cooder this album is mainly composed of moodily chorded,heavy reverbed hard modern blues/soul/rock style versions of civil rights era protest/spiritual songs such as "This Little Light Of Mine","Eyes On The Prize","In The Mississippi River" and "Jesus Is On The Main Line". The fact the little to nothing is known of those who made up these traditional songs Mavis and Ry almost make it sound as if they wrote the songs together as originals. The songs are played as if they've been written by the musician and Mavis,as always has exactly her way with them vocally. Most of the album follows on this slow,heavy handed level as Mavis has obviously come to the conclusion we must not be lax in our outlook on civil rights because,in particular in the era this was recorded in it seemed as if things in that regard were taking a turn back. Seeing how poorly many people behaved during the 2008 presidential election she may have in fact been onto something. Only "99 And 1/2" and "My Own Eyes" have anything close to a dance tempo here. This is not exactly a happy album but it's not pessimistic either. It's rather resigned and that might be why upon first listen I had little to no reaction to it. It's an album you will have to take time to really get into if your interested. But if you take the time the rewards are very worth it,especially for your soul!Free Music Review: Mavis Staples Glorious Return
Hit: 5 Stars
The record label that has been responsible for a few of the most important roots records in the past decade now brings back Mavis Staples to glory. Although the record is now produced by Ry Cooder, the same approach is used as John Henry chose for Solomon Burke, sparse and stripped down. One of the things that immediately strikes is how well Mavis' voice has stood the test of time. Where Solomon's voice is showing cracks these days, her voice still rings out as a bell.
We'll Never Turn Back in a funny sense doesn't live up to it's title, it does turns back in to time. Here Mavis performs a string of old spirituals that have been important through out her career and have had a strong connection to the civil rights movement. Songs like Eyes on the Prize, We Shall Not Be Moved and Turn Me Round are deeply embedded in our sub-conscious. Nobody really owns these songs, everybody does. That made these songs so apt for the movement, they were communitarian.
Ry Cooder allowed the songs to drift from their original arrangement just enough to let them sound fresh and ever so recognizable. Some off the traditional songs have had some lyrics added without compromising their inherent strength. The original compositions on the album blend in and appear to have been here just as long. Nowhere does this album become a Ry Cooder album, even though it has his own unmistakable touch, it is Mavis who carries the album. Ry Cooder shows us again what an excellent side man he can be to just about any artist.
What is shocking in some sense to this album is the strong connection these songs seem to have to this day and age. With the Patriot Act, Iraq, Katrina and the ever growing divide between the haves and the have-nots, questions about our civil rights are as urgent as ever. That's why the new songs touching the same subjects seem to just blend in with those songs that sometimes have been here for ages. We'll Never Turn Back sounds urgent, even though one gets that impression at first the album is not a reminder calling out from the past, it's a mirror reflecting today.