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Staple Singers, the

American vocal group that was one of the most successful gospel-to-pop crossover acts ever, collecting several Top 20 hits in the early 1970s. The members included Roebuck (“Pops”) Staples (b. December 2, 1915, Winona, Mississippi, U.S.—d. December 19, 2000, Dolton, Illinois), Mavis Staples (b. 1940, Chicago, Illinois), Cleotha Staples (b. 1934, Mississippi), Pervis Staples (b. 1935, Mississippi), and Yvonne Staples (b. 1939, Chicago).

Any barriers between the sacred and the sensual that Aretha Franklin may have left standing were blown away by Mavis Staples and her thrilling contralto. Begun by Mavis's guitarist father, Roebuck, in the early 1950s, the Staple Singers included her sisters Cleotha and Yvonne (the latter joined after the group had been performing for a while) and her brother Pervis (who left in the early 1970s). As a teenager Roebuck had picked cotton at Dockery's plantation, where he was influenced by legendary guitarist Charley Patton and other seminal blues musicians, and he moved to Chicago in the mid-1930s. By the mid-1950s his terse lead guitar and the family's otherworldly harmonies had made the Staples a leading gospel group. They recorded memorable versions of “Uncloudy Day” (1959) and other sacred classics for the Vee Jay label.

The Staples finally succeeded in breaking into the secular market after the group signed with Stax Records in 1968 and made a series of records marked by the seamless blending of genres and an infectious optimism. “Heavy Makes You Happy” (1971) was their first secular hit, and “Respect Yourself” (1971) paved the way for “I'll Take You There” (1972), a number one single on both the pop and rhythm-and-blues charts. The group had a modest hit with a cover of Talking Heads' “Slippery People” in 1984 and remained active into the 1990s. Mavis maintained a simultaneous solo career beginning in the late 1960s, and Roebuck's solo album Father Father won a Grammy Award for best contemporary blues album in 1994. In 1999 the Staple Singers were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Christopher Walters

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