Muscle Shoals-I'll Take You There

The Staple Singers: I’ll Take You There
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I’m a little surprised that I’ve never devoted a post to the great Mavis Staples—although she is mentioned at length in the In Memoriam piece that I wrote in January 2019 honoring her sister Yvonne. I’ve seen Mavis perform a few times, and every time she simply blew me away. She’s in her 80’s, has recorded amazing music her whole life—including a bunch of great albums over the past few years, and as I write this, is on tour, with dates scheduled in North America and Europe through next summer. If you get a chance to see her, do it, because sadly, she isn’t going to be around forever. And go see Mavis!, the movie from 2015 about her life, which is streamable. And while you are at it, make sure you see Summer of Soul, in which the young Mavis duets with her idol Mahalia Jackson, maybe the best performance in a movie filled with incredible performances. It’s on Hulu, but should be seen in a theater, unless you have a huge screen and big speakers. 

What makes Mavis Staples so great goes beyond her voice, or even her ability to interpret a song. She somehow is able to mix the gospel music she grew up on, with secular soul music and the protest and message music of the 1960s and beyond, and do it in a way that is both uplifting and surprisingly sexy (without being trashy). 

Her first No. 1 pop hit, “I’ll Take You There,” with her family group The Staple Singers, is a great example of this mix—and more. Recorded at the Muscle Shoals Studio and featuring the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section (Eddie Hinton on lead guitar, David Hood on bass, Barry Beckett on piano, Roger Hawkins on drums, with additional guitar from Jimmy Johnson and Raymond Banks), with the Memphis Horns dubbed in later, its message can be interpreted as laying out the path to heaven, or to a world where the civil rights movement—still active when the song was released in 1972—had succeeded. And there’s something in Mavis’ delivery (much of which was ad libbed), which indicates that maybe she’s offering to lead to somewhere more private. 

What I didn’t know is that the introduction to the song and much of the melody and arrangement, are borrowed from/influenced by a reggae song, “The Liquidator,” by the Harry J Allstars. Check it out here. Al Bell, one of the owners of Stax Records, who wrote and produced the song, had brought a copy of “The Liquidator” to the sessions and played it for the musicians, who thought it was a demo, and not an actual released song. David Hood said, "The Liquidator thing, we didn't know what that was. As I recall, [Bell] came in and brought what they call a dub. It was like an acetate or something, a disk that you put on the record player and play. And it had no lyrics on it. We just thought it was an instrumental track that somebody had done for a song. And it was only years later when I found out that that had been a record." 

As we know from Seuras’ piece about the Muscle Shoals/Traffic connection, members of the rhythm section, including Hood and Hawkins, toured with Traffic, who regularly listened to Island labelmate Bob Marley and the Wailers’ album Catch A Fire, and as Hood recalled, "We kept hearing that. I thought, 'Wow, this is the greatest, wildest music I've ever heard.’" In fact, reggae influences permeate the entire album that “I’ll Take You There,” was on, Be Altitude: Respect Yourself.

Finally, here’s a nice piece by David Hood’s son Patterson, who you probably know from his regular job with Drive-By Truckers, about growing up in the Muscle Shoals area (including finding out that his father was the bass player on “I’ll Take You There”), and much more. Patterson’s a fine prose writer, as well as a great songwriter (which you probably know, if you’ve read my stuff here and elsewhere).

In Memoriam: Yvonne Staples & Edwin Hawkins

Edwin Hawkins Singers: Oh Happy Day
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The elephant in the room here is Aretha Franklin, a musical titan who died last year, and who I suspect will not be discussed during this theme on the theory that her passing has gotten its due elsewhere. Franklin, of course, started out in gospel music, before expanding her audience to many styles of secular music. When Franklin, who grew up in Detroit, was a young woman on the gospel circuit, she would often stay in the Chicago home of Pops Staples, where she became friendly with his children, including Mavis and Yvonne who were a few years older. Yvonne Staples passed away in April, at the age of 80.

Like Franklin, the Staple Singers started in gospel before branching out. Yvonne, the third Staples child, was a wonderful singer, but did not seek the limelight, deferring to Mavis’ extraordinary gift. Although Yvonne was always willing to be part of the family act, she often dropped out of performing, focusing on the group’s business matters, or her other interests. However, if Pops called, she returned. As she once said, “When Daddy asked us to do something, we did it. No questions asked.”

Yvonne and younger sister Mavis were very close, and when Pops died in 2000, Mavis became depressed and stopped performing. As Mavis recalled, her big sister let her have it: “Yvonne said, ‘Mavis, your daddy would want you to keep singing. You’ve got to get up. You’re daddy’s legacy.’ … And that’s when she started with the other words: ‘Damn it, Mavis,’ and worse. It woke me up.” Yvonne toured with her sister for years, contributing harmonies and often sitting regally in a chair while Mavis played to the crowd. And apparently, Yvonne was the one who cracked the whip to make sure that the band performed at their best.

According to Mavis, as Franklin’s and the Staples’ careers took off, they grew apart. But when Pops died, Franklin invited Yvonne and Mavis to visit her in the Hamptons, and Yvonne’s death led to Mavis and Aretha reconnecting for some phone calls before Franklin’s death.

In 1987, Franklin released a gospel album, One Lord, One Faith, One Baptism, on which she and Staples performed a version of the hymn “Oh Happy Day,” which became a hit in 1969 in a version by the Edwin Hawkins Singers. Arranged by Hawkins, from an 18th Century hymn originally by Phillip Doddridge, the song was a surprise worldwide hit, and featured the powerhouse vocals of Dorothy Combs Morrison, who also toured with, among others, Van Morrison and Boz Scaggs.

Hawkins, who died just over a year ago at 74, was backing his family’s gospel group on keyboards by the age of 7. He was co-founder of the Northern California State Youth Choir of the Church of God in Christ, which recorded “Oh Happy Day” as a fundraiser, but in early 1969, it came to the attention of Abe “Voco” Keshishian, an influential DJ at underground station KSAN in the Bay Area, who started to play the song. You can see the original album packaging here.   Then, Dan Sorkin, a morning DJ at influential AM station, KSFO began pushing the song. It generated enough buzz that a bidding war to release the song broke out, with Buddah Records getting the rights.

Released under the shorter, less gospel sounding name of the Edwin Hawkins Singers, the song became a crossover hit, and won a Grammy for Best Soul Gospel Performance. Apparently, the song's departures from tradition was divisive in the gospel community, but eventually became influential both by opening the door for other gospel musicians to include more pop sounds in their music and by making gospel-based music more palatable to secular music fans. Thus paving the way for both Franklin and the Staples to become successful mainstream artists.

In 1970, the Singers, along with Melanie, had another hit, "Lay Down (Candles in the Rain),” but basically that was in for the pop charts, although Hawkins won a total of four Grammys in gospel categories, the most recent in 1993.