Review: Mavis Staples ‘Have A Little Faith’

Review: Mavis Staples ‘Have A Little Faith’

By Hal Horowitz

It seems unimaginable. How could Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers’ iconic lead vocalist, find herself in the early 00s thinking she had no future as an artist?

After Pops Staples passed in 2000, the band dissolved. A clutch of previous Mavis solo albums, including two played on, co-written and produced by Prince (1989 and ’93), didn’t connect leaving her commercially, if not artistically, adrift. Calls to labels she was previously associated with weren’t returned. As Staples writes, “I didn’t know anyone, and they didn’t know me.”

Enter producer/songwriter/multi-instrumentalist Jim Tullio, who had worked with singer/songwriters like John Martyn and Steve Goodman. He offered to help Staples craft an album in his basement studio. The result, made on her own dime and which she co-produced, was Have a Little Faith.

However, since this was before music streaming, she had no viable method to distribute it. A friend mentioned Bruce Iglauer, owner/founder of Alligator Records, the country’s most well-respected and veteran blues imprint. He was thrilled to work with her, releasing the album in 2004 to enthusiastic critical and popular acclaim. Staples’ solo career got a much needed burst of adrenaline which hasn’t slowed down or stopped since, even now at the age of 85. Her birthday was recently celebrated with a concert featuring young and older musicians, including Hozier, Jackson Browne, Taj Mahal and many others, showing how Staples’ work has resonated with a wide swath of roots artists.

But this comeback started with the appropriately titled Have a Little Faith. Twenty years after its initial appearance, the album is reissued, for the first time on vinyl, with fresh notes penned by Staples. Although this was her only Alligator set (there have been six additional studio, and two live releases since, all on the ANTI- label), the collection remains as potent, powerful and essential as when it first appeared two decades ago.

From the fittingly titled opening “Step Into the Light” with its bluesy acoustic slide and portentous lyrics of “When you die/the world keeps rolling by,” to the closing reprise of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” (the first song Mavis sang with her family, now enhanced by a popping bass harmonica), Staples’ husky, soulful, gospel-infused vocals are as tough and gutsy as anything she did previously.

Tullio surrounds these songs with organic instrumentation that never feels musty, dated, or worse, overly slick. Even when backing singers and horns enhance the funk of “I Still Believe In You” (the lyrics could be directed at a higher power or a friend…maybe both) or a bouzouki and fiddle appear on a cover of Pops Staples’ blues “A Dying Man’s Plea,” the sound stays clean and vibrant, keeping Mavis’ church-infused voice prominent in the mix.

Staples’ distinguished 60s civil rights background, singing and touring with Dr. Martin Luther King, is alluded to in “Ain’t No Better.” It’s exemplified by “In this life you stand up and fight/Change will come but not overnight,” as a pulsing backbeat supports those affirmations. The almost prophetic “There’s a Devil on the Loose” can be applicable to today’s divisive politics (“He’s turning mothers against daughters/Fathers against sons”) as rootsy accompaniment boils behind her.

Perhaps the lack of a strict timetable, a clock running on a high-end recording facility or an executive peering over their shoulders pushing them to make “hits” provided Tullio and Staples the freedom to record this world-class album without outside interference. Regardless, it solidified her position as one of this generation’s finest and most uplifting voices.

On “Pop’s Recipe,” she pays tribute to her dad’s constructive teachings (“…accept responsibility/Don’t forget humility…serve your artistry”) and the love that inspired her, over popping bass and thumping drums. “Be the best that you can be,” is a statement attributed to him.

Which is what Mavis Staples does to stunning results on the superb and absolutely timeless Have a Little Faith.

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“Have A Little Faith”