In anybody else's hands, this new Mavis Staples album would have been a museum piece, interesting but ultimately dust-covered and remote.
Not that We'll Never Turn Back (just issued Tuesday by Anti Records) doesn't have plenty of right things to say, and certainly plenty of righteous things, in melding well-known "freedom songs" of the Civil Rights movement with like-minded newer compositions.
But Staples ends up using them as a platform to tell her own engaging story of survival, and of hope, and (perhaps most importantly) of determination to foster change still to come.
We'll Never Turn Back, as expected, speaks to the larger issues of equality, but also to Staples' own difficult upbringing in the rural Deep South of separate water fountains and separate lives — and how that helped shape her into a woman, and into an artist.
As a member of the 1960s-era Staples Singers, Mavis always drew from the deep well of spirituals and church hymns — even if it was only by feel — to push her sound into your heart. Along the way, her family group became (through tunes like "Respect Yourself," "City In The Sky," "Why Am I Treated So Bad?") one of the most important of the mainstream soul collectives to fight through music for racial justice.
Here, Staples finds the same delicate balance, coupling ageless reinterpretations (beginning with J.B. Lenoir's "Down in Mississippi") with tracks co-written by producer Ry Cooder. The result is something somehow instantly recognizable and yet completely new.
Cooder, for instance, turns the familiar "This Little Light" inside out — arranging it as a chugging blues groover. Later, in a spoken ad-lib during the traditional "99 and a Half," Staples tries to exorcise scenes familiar to Americans in the wake of the devastating hurricanes of 2005: "Broken levees, lying politicians, running through hatred, homeless babies — freedom now! Freedom now!".
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