Booker T., Mavis Staples set for soulful benefit
The spirit of tomorrow will illuminate the stage when Booker T. & the MGs appear with Mavis Staples on Saturday in a benefit concert for the Old Town School of Folk Music. The soul music legends each will perform their own set in the Harris Theater in Millennium Park.
They will be in Chicago on the cusp of a historic presidential election. Soul was just entering the American lexicon at the time of another historic election, in November 1968.
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"I heard a political science professor declare that the politics of America goes in a 40-year cycle," former Stax Records bandleader-composer Booker T. Jones said last week from San Francisco. "That would make 1968 ring true. Go back to 1928 and maybe there is something to that. I went to Washington [D.C.] three weeks ago and was very excited. I felt that real estate was in for a change. Mavis and myself in Chicago before the election is going to be a wonderful spirit to see. It's time."
By Nov. 1, 1968, Stax records publicist Deanie Parker had just started a magazine called Stax Fax. Some deemed it controversial because it branched out beyond music into issues of black power and social justice. (Also a songwriter, Parker -- who still works at the Stax Music Academy in Memphis -- wrote "Who Took the Merry Out of Christmas?" for the Staple Singers.) The Soul Children had released "I'll Understand" on Stax, with Jones doing the string arrangements.
Few modern artists have cultivated as many soul brothers and sisters as Booker T. & the MGs and Staples.
"The meaning of 'soul' was quite restricted in 1968," Jones said. "It's like a lot of words in English in that everyone's definition can be their own. The more spiritual definition became adopted by the music community for a certain kind of music. But it was interesting to hear Humphrey use it and he would have the right to say that because of his policies."
Soul is a feeling. And Stax was "Soulsville."
Booker T. & the MGs' hits like "Hip Hug-Her," the tropical "Soul Limbo" and "Hang 'em High" (October 1968) drip into your soul like hot butter. The Staple Singers' hits like "I'll Take You There," "Respect Yourself" and "Freedom Highway" elevate your soul. On Saturday, Staples will be singing those songs and others from her first live solo album, "Mavis Staples Live: Hope at the Hideout," recorded in Chicago earlier this year.
"It's important we hold on to these songs I'm singing," Staples said in a separate interview. "They are part of a time when history was being made. They inspired us when we were marching. We are still living in a time of injustice and racism. I'm still on 'Freedom Highway' and I will be on it until Dr. [Martin Luther] King's dream is realized."
"The first time I heard the Staple Singers, they didn't know me," Jones said. "I was a paper boy, maybe 9th or 10th grade. Mason Temple was on my route and the church door was open because people were overflowing into the yard. I could look from the street straight down to the pulpit.
"I have never forgotten how the Staples sound made me feel. I heard them sing and heard Pops with the tremolo guitar. Mavis, Pervis and Cleo. Very often, my papers were late."
Jones did not meet Staples until July 1968, when the family signed with Stax after being dropped by Epic.
"The Staples were practically the only ones who were mixing Deep South African-American spiritualism with [politics] like that," Jones said. "Who else was? All other groups were strictly spiritual. Maybe their ministers were telling them they couldn't do that. But the Staples were the only ones who had the courage. They affected me just as they affected a whole generation. It still is profound. When I see Mavis, I talk to her about things I don't talk to other people about."
• • "Soul Superstars: Mavis Staples & Booker T. and the MGs," 7:30 p.m. Saturday, Harris Theater for Music and Dance, 205 E. Randolph. Tickets, $75-$250. Call (312) 334--7777 or visit harristheaterchicago.org. A limited number of 2-for1 tickets are available at all price points.