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Mavis Staples : The Gospel According to Jeff Tweedy

Their first meeting was just as it should be: at The Hideout club in Chicago. Mavis Staples, the illustrious queen of modern gospel and longtime member of The Staples Singers—a woman who has been performing 60 years and watched the world turn several times—and Jeff Tweedy, a musician who has helped reshape and reinvigorate rock and roll in his groundbreaking band Wilco.

On paper, it might seem like an unlikely pairing. Where was the intersection between church-born music like “I’ll Take You There” and “You Don’t Knock,” with the boundary pushing aspects on albums like Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and A Ghost Is Born? Surely there would be genre collusions that could end in an apples-and-oranges scenario, sending both sides going back to the drawing board. In practice, nothing could be further from that: You Are Not Alone is a work of stunning strength and vision and makes it seem as though these two Chicago residents are candidates for the separated-at-birth squad.

Even today, Mavis Staples is shaking her head how it all happened. “Jeff came out to our show at this funky club on the North Side of Chicago,” she says. “He came upstairs and we met. After the show he came back and congratulated us—very nice. We were recording a live album that night. Two or three weeks later my manager called and said, ‘Mavis, Jeff Tweedy wants to produce your next album.’ I still couldn’t believe it. When I got off the phone I just said, ‘Thank you, Jesus.’ I knew it was a blessing.”

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The great spirits often work in mysterious patterns, but this time they had their timing just right. Mavis Staples has traveled a long and often challenging road. Her father, guitarist Roebuck “Pops” Staples, built The Staple Singers around his son and three daughters in the early ‘50s, teaching them to lead with faith and never give up. Their musical journey took them through an endless array of experiences, from singing with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on freedom marches in the early 1960s, tagged as “God’s Greatest Hitmakers,” to the heights of pop stardom during the ‘70s with mega-hits like “Respect Yourself.”

There were some rocky years in the ‘80s and ‘90s before Prince signed Mavis to his Paisley Park label and released two solo albums. But through it all, her voice has remained a deep-seated instrument of soul, sounding like an impassioned weapon of love for all mankind to learn from.

When Tweedy and Staples teamed up last year, the woman felt she’d found a new true path. “He came to the South Side and we talked,” she recalls. “And what we had in common immediately was we’re both family-oriented, which made me feel really good because Pops had always instilled in us that family is the strongest unit in the world, something that no one can mess with. I was so thrilled we’d be working together because I put Jeff Tweedy on a high pedestal and felt he knew what I was about.”

Their collaboration seems almost blessed from the start, as Tweedy was a longtime fan of Staples. “I have almost everything she’s ever recorded and I dug back through very thoroughly when I was given this job to do,” says Tweedy. “I thought that if I refreshed myself about where she’s been, it would help her figure out where she wanted to go. I wanted to be sure that we were making a record that she really wanted to make.”