Mavis Staples's Revolution of Compassion
<em>If All I Was Was Black</em>, the soul legend’s third album with Jeff Tweedy, is a world-wise call for empathy and change.
In 1972, the Staple Singers lodged themselves at No. 1 on the Billboard charts and cemented their place in soul history by singing of a place where nobody’s crying, nobody’s worrying, and nobody’s “lying to the races.” “I’ll take you there,” Mavis Staples and her family promised. As neatly as could be, the song distilled gospel and soul’s deepest yearning: for deliverance.
Over thelast 45 years, Mavis Staples has never stopped singing about the dream of a better, arrives with a
