The Staple Singers - Collection 1953-62 (2018)

The Staples' story goes all the way back to 1915 in Winona, Mississippi, when patriarch Roebuck "Pops" Staples entered the world. A contemporary and familiar of Charley Patton's, Roebuck quickly became adept as a solo blues guitarist, entertaining at local dances and picnics. He was also drawn to the church, and by 1937 he was singing and playing guitar with the Golden Trumpets, a spiritual group based out of Drew, Mississippi. Moving to Chicago four years later, he continued playing gospel music with the Windy City's Trumpet Jubilees. A decade later Pops Staples (as he had become known) presented two of his daughters, Cleotha and Mavis, and his one son, Pervis, in front of a church audience, and the Staple Singers were born.

The Staple Singers are one of the most celebrated and respected groups to have graced the gospel landscape in the post-war era, their music transcending the boundaries of the genres so that they became equally successful and admired across gospel, soul and R&B in a career that spanned six decades. The patriarch of the Staples family, Roebuck ‘Pops’ Staples, formed the group in Chicago with his children Cliotha, Pervis and Mavis, in 1948 when Mavis was just nine years old, and by 1952 they had signed their first recording deal with United. Over the next decade they recorded for various labels, most notably after United for Vee-Jay, Gospel and Riverside, their music already displaying a commercial bluesy edge which differentiated from much of the mainstream gospel of that era. This 3-CD anthology brings together just about all the records they released on both singles and albums during that formative part of their career when the younger members were maturing and they were honing the style which would bring them classic R&B and pop hits in subsequent decades. As well as the A and B sides of their singles, including one or two on lesser known labels, it includes all the tracks from their albums during that era – “albums “Uncloudy Day”, “Will The Circle Be Unbroken”, “Swing Low”, “Gospel Program” and “Hammer & Nails”. It’s a marvellous introduction to the group at the start of their glittering career.