A family choir that carried gospel into the soul charts

Roebuck “Pops” Staples moved his family from Mississippi to Chicago in 1936, where he worked in steel mills and meatpacking plants while his children grew up. In 1948 the family started appearing in Chicago-area churches, and their first public appearance was at the Mount Zion Church, where Pops’s brother, Rev. Chester Staples, was pastor. They signed their first professional contract in 1952. The members were Pops with his children Cleotha, Pervis and Mavis, and Yvonne, who replaced Pervis when he was drafted into the Army.

Early on they recorded in an acoustic gospel-folk style. “Uncloudy Day” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” were best sellers for Vee-Jay. Bob Dylan said in 2015 that “Uncloudy Day” was the most mysterious thing he had ever heard, and that Mavis’s singing knocked him out. At Epic they recorded the live in-church album Freedom Highway, whose title track was a civil rights protest song written by Pops, and reached wider audiences with “Why (Am I Treated So Bad)” and Stephen Stills’s “For What It’s Worth”.

At Stax from 1968, first with Steve Cropper and then with Al Bell, they moved toward funk and soul, recording rhythm sessions at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio. “Heavy Makes You Happy (Sha-Na-Boom-Boom)” came in early 1971, and “Respect Yourself”, a song of self-empowerment written by Luther Ingram and Mack Rice, peaked at number two on the R&B chart and number 12 on the Hot 100. Both sold more than a million copies. In 1972 “I’ll Take You There” topped both Billboard charts, and in 1973 “If You’re Ready (Come Go with Me)” reached number 9 on the Hot 100 and number one on the R&B chart.

After Stax went bankrupt in 1975, they signed with Curtis Mayfield’s Curtom Records. “Let’s Do It Again”, produced by Mayfield, became their second number one pop hit in the United States. In 1976 they joined The Band in the film The Last Waltz, performing “The Weight”, a song they had already covered on their first Stax album.