Monday, August 26th
sounds of Chicago
Mavis Staples, Jeff Tweedy, “Freedom Highway,” live, Chicago, 8/22/24
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Tag: Mavis Staples
2023
Sunday, November 5th
timeless
The Staple Singers, “Uncloudy Day,” 1956
It was the most mysterious thing I’d ever heard. It was like the fog rolling in. I heard it again, maybe the next night, and its mystery had even deepened. What was that? How do you make that?
—Bob Dylan (quoted in M. Davidson & P. Fishel, eds., Bob Dylan: Mixing up the Medicine [2023])
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lagniappe
random sights
other day, Oak Park, Ill.
*****
reading table
The unreality of our house in moonlight
Is that if the moonlight strikes it
It is truly there tho it is ours—George Oppen (1908-1984), from “Route”
2022
Sunday, August 28th
more
Mavis Staples (1939-) and Levon Helm (1940-2012), “You Got to Move” (rec. 2011, Woodstock, N.Y.), published 2022
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lagniappe
random sights
other day, Chicago (Alexander Calder [1898-1976], Flamingo [1973], detail)
2022
Sunday, August 7th
what’s new
Mavis Staples (1939-) and Levon Helm (1940-2012), “Farther Along,” published 8/5/22 (rec. 2011, Woodstock, N.Y.)
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lagniappe
random sights
other day, Oak Park, Ill.
2019
Sunday, July 28th
sounds of Chicago
This I could listen to all day.
Staple Singers, “Pray On” (R. Staples), live (TV show), Chicago, 1966
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lagniappe
random sights
other day, Oak Park, Ill.
2019
Monday, June 3rd
what’s new
Mavis Staples with Ben Harper, “We Get By” (B. Harper), published 5/15/19
***
Another take.
Live (TV show), published 5/21/19
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe
—album title, saxophonist Albert Ayler, 1969
(Taking a break—back in a while.)
2016
Friday, September 23rd
How strange it seems, still, that he should be dead.
Prince with Mavis Staples, et al., live, England (King’s Cross), 1993
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
Kerry James Marshall (1955-), Slow Dance, 1992-93 (Kerry James Marshall, Mastry, through 9/25/16)
2016
Sunday, February 7th
sounds of Chicago
Jubilee Showcase (TV show), Chicago, 1963-1984
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lagniappe
random sights
other day, Oak Park, Ill.
2014
Sunday, November 9th
That gospel feeling is in all of this music.
—Solomon Burke
Soul Deep: The Story of Black Popular Music, Episode 2: Sam Cooke, with Mavis Staples, Bobby Womack, Solomon Burke, Ben E. King, et al., BBC, 2005
#1
#2
#3
#4
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lagniappe
art beat: more from Friday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Arshile Gorky (1904-1948), The Plough and the Song, 1946
2013
Wednesday, November 13th
Here’s a variation, from the 1960s civil rights struggles, on the gospel song we heard Sunday.
SNCC Freedom Singers (AKA The Freedom Singers), “Woke Up This Morning with My Mind on Freedom,” live, Turkey, 2007
We started singing songs at the mass meetings. Songs of the movement gave you energy–a willingness and a wantingness to want to be free. Whenever there was a march to be taken place, there were songs that we would use to motivate the people to get in the line. One such song was “I Woke Up This Morning with My Mind Stayed on Freedom.” Most of the songs from the movement were taken from spirituals, gospel, and rhythm and blues–any type of music. Someone in the audience would start and say, “Come and go with me to that land. Come and go with me to that land.” And the rest would just repeat it.
*****
And here’s another take on the original.
Mavis Staples, “Woke Up This Morning with My Mind on Jesus,” recording (One True Vine), 2013
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lagniappe
art beat
Danny Lyon (1942-), Atlanta (Toddle House), 1963
music clip of the day 