Years after his death, Pops Staples returned as sweetly vibrant, as light-filled and meaningful, as deeply soulful as ever. He had family, and friendship, to thank for it.
Don’t Lose This was released on Feb. 13, 2015 by daughter Mavis Staples, who co-produced a series of 1998 sessions that formed the basis of this posthumous triumph. She says, back then, they had gathered to make another Staple Singers album, but instead decided to let Pops take the lead.
Unfortunately, the patriarch was in decline. Pop Staples was too weak at times to go on at Chicago’s Hinge Recording Studio, and was forced to stretch out on a nearby couch. Ultimately, the project was set aside, and the tapes sat dormant.
Dormant, but never far from Mavis Staples’ mind. She said her father, upon hearing a playback of the early sessions when he was very near death, encouraged her to look after this music, to make sure – when the time was right – that it was released. And not, as this album title reminds, to lose it.
Then she began working with Jeff Tweedy, the Wilco band leader who collaborated on both 2010’s You Are Not Alone and 2013’s One True Vine. As their professional relationship deepened, Mavis turned back to the old tapes with Pops. She recorded new vocals to finish the tracks out, while Tweedy and his son Spencer played bass and drums, respectively. (By then, the latter two had formed the offshoot band Tweedy.)
They came away with a fond farewell that underscored just what we’d lost. Songs like “Somebody Was Watching” – which found Pops Staples singing with smiling gusto about the blessings that seem to come out of nowhere in our lives – reconnected with the Staple Singers’ gospel roots. He kept going, touching on history, both in narrative (“The Lady’s Letter,” a soldier’s eulogy) and in interpretive form (“Nobody’s Fault but Mine,” by Blind Willie Johnson – a smart reminder of Pops’ underrated ability to wave Delta blues-guitar lines into the Staples work).
Songs like “Friendship” leaned more toward their wonder-filled turn-of-the-1970s R&B sound. The sense of community, of family, certainly translated throughout the Staple Singers’ catalog. But there was something else, too — a stirring sense of regard, of friendship. This was a family band which felt like it, and you hear that all over again in every line here.
Elsewhere, Pops baptized Bob Dylan’s “Gotta Serve Somebody” in an amiable faith-filled glow, and found new emotional depths in Margaret Allison’s “Sweet Home” while singing: “Before this time, yeah, another year. I may be dead and gone.” It was true, so terribly true.
The essential sweetness, the warm sense of homecoming surrounding Don’t Lose This was only deepened when Pops Staples’ hope-sprung vocals intertwining once more with Mavis, as well as the late Yvonne and Cleotha Staples. (Pops died in 2000; Cleotha passed in 2013, Yvonne followed in 2018.) Jeff Tweedy did some secondary production work here too.
Still, Don’t Lose This belongs to – will always belong to – the ageless Roebuck “Pops” Staples. Light leaked out of every corner of his voice, right up until the end.
We’re still glad Mavis didn’t lose this.
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