I’ll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March Up Freedom’s Highway

Chicago Tribune music critic Kot lets popular music icon Mavis Staples, lead singer of the Staples Singers, have her say in this rousing, chatty bio of 60 years of performing. Written with the cooperation of Mavis and family, this down home tale begins with Mavis’s ambitious father, Pop Staples, breaking away from a hardscrabble life in the Mississippi Delta, gathering his young family around him to start an upward climb through the Southern gospel circuit of the ’50s and ’60s, featuring Mavis, the skinny little girl with the grown-up voice. Along the way to stardom and sales of more than 30 million records, Mavis and her musical brood, based on Chicago’s South Side, crosses paths with such legends as Mahalia Jackson, Sam Cooke, Lou Rawls, and Aretha Franklin, while making their indelible mark with inspiring songs about the civil rights struggle. Teasing the reader with Mavis’s abbreviated romance with Bob Dylan, her teaming with the reclusive Prince, and her recent association with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, Kot’s effort remains clear and respectful and takes us deep into the golden age of Mavis and her marvelously talented group. (Jan)