Unlike in Britain, where the bar for entry is more survival than talent, “national treasure” is not a term in such wide currency in America. But Mavis Staples is indeed a National Treasure – rather, an International Treasure – writ large. Younger readers who were mesmerised by Timothy Chalamet playing Bob Dylan and who then asked on social media “what did Joan Baez and Pete Seeger do after A Complete Unknown?” (yes, really) may recall a scene early in that movie where “the unwashed phenomenon” (as Baez would later describe him) plays a hootenanny at Riverside Church. There he meets not only Suze Rotolo, the red-diaper activist who would become his girlfriend, but Mavis Staples (played by Laura Kariuki).
In real life, their glancing encounter took place at a gospel show on Randalls Island, where the Staple Singers were sharing the bill with Mahalia Jackson. According to his biographer, Robert Shelton, Dylan shouted across a lunchroom at her father, Roebuck "Pops" Staples, "I wanna marry Mavis!"
It wasn’t the only time he asked, but Mavis had more sense. They did hang out together and remained friends, and in 1979 she duetted with him on "Gonna Change My Way of Thinking.” In 2016 and ’17, they toured together. On Wednesday, she began a two-night residency at London’s Union Chapel, where the last surviving member of “God’s greatest hitmakers” (as the Staple Singers were known) felt right at home. She’s almost two years older than Dylan, a tad unsteady on her feet perhaps, but full of fun and energy, laughing and joking throughout with both the audience and the excellent three-piece band (Rick Holmstrom, guitar; Gregory Boaz, bass; Steve Mugalian, drums) and two backing vocalists, who provided both harmonies and gospel-style call-and-response. “Glad to see y’all,” she proclaimed, after a couple of numbers, “and so good to see so many familiar faces. We love y’all.”
It was a joyous evening that drew heavily on her most recent album, Sad and Beautiful World, which won two Grammys. Among the highlights were “Chicago,” the powerful Tom Waits and Katherine Brennan number, and Nick Lowe’s profound and contemplative “Far Celestial Shore.” From deep in her songbag came “Respect Yourself,” and “Handwriting On the Wall,” both dating back over fifty years and recorded originally with the Staple Singers. “Daniel knows what it says, Daniel knows what it says!” Staples told the crowd, the throughline of church and civil rights movement in her life and work as clear as it ever was. In “No Time for Crying” from her 2017 album If All I Was Was Black, she reminds us that “Bullets are flying/People are dying/No time for tears/We’ve got work to do”, adding “We don’t need no Ice.”
After listening to Martin Luther King, Pops Staples famously remarked, "if he can preach it, we can sing it.” And sing it they did. Mavis still does. Sustained by her deep and abiding faith and an unbreakable commitment to the civil rights movement, she is a living witness to the struggles of the 1960s and the embodiment of grace, goodness, and optimism through thick and thin. The woman who famously said “the devil has no music” ended the show with “Everybody Needs Love.” Sadly, there was no encore. Sing out, Sister Mavis, sing out!
