POPS

Rip It Up, Issue 180, 1 July 1992, Page 16

POPS

Today there’s the usual international toll delay and then Pops is no speed freak. His laconic Southern style is part of his charm. And he's not sitting on a shady veranda in the south. "I'm in Chicago, at home." Pop migrated north like so many others, leaving the Mississippi, for urban economic opportunities. The train still runs — "The City of New Orleans" —leaves Louisiana, heads North to Memphis then concludes its journey in Chicago. Starting out as a folksy gospel group, the Staple Singers toughened up in the 70s, called themselves "The Staples" and echoing the Church-based Civil Rights movement and even the growing Afro-American consciousness.

"We were singing before Dr King started preaching. When he started I told my children this is what needs to be heard, and if Dr King can preach it, we can sing it. So let's sing protest songs and songs that are an inspiration to the world. He called us and we would go all over the country singing and he was preaching and it was that way until he got killed, we were very close to him ..." Just as Pops releases his album Peace to the Neighbourhood

there are riots in Los Angeles. Another decade, another King, but Pops' sentiments ring true. "I believe that we are doing the right thing to try and tell people that everybody is somebody. We need to treat one another right, we need to get together — together we stand divided we fall. I'm just trying to tell people in song." "All those policemen, they can't see there was an injustice in them beatin' up Rodney King like they did and things like that is causing a lot of trouble here in the US. Those black people are mad because those people should have been convicted and that's what's happening all the time." "I don't think the black people were right to pull the white guy out of his truck and beat him up, but they had to do something." America has got better since you started touring? "When we first started singing, when we go down south. If there weren't a restaurants for blacks, we got go to a white restaurant, we had to go round to the backdoor and order take out. But you know, the change has been made so I even got a Park named after me down in Mississipi where I was raised."

How far have you come from your Gospel roots?

"No, as far as I'm concerned I haven't come nowhere from it because we are singing contemporary gospel, constructive songs that people need to hear. All we tryin' to say in songs, everybody want to be treated right and I don't see why it's so hard."

Pops sadly describes the USA as "racist."

"You can go to Cuba, some of their people are as black as we are, and they treat them as if they were a white Cubans, they treat them all the same but here we are treated different and we built this country, the black people built this country as slaves."

For Pops and the Staple Singers their music career took them back to Memphis and the Stax soul label to record their No.l hit 'l'll Take You There'. And Pops recorded his new album Peace to the Neighbourhood in Memphis too, this time with Al Green producer Willie Mitchell.

On two traditional tracks on Peace to the Neighbourhood, Pop Staples works with Ry Cooder producing and playing guitar while Bonnie Raitt and Jackson Browne join Pops on Browne's 'World in Motion'. "Bonnie Raitt saw us in New Orleans. She was raised up on our music. She wanted to come in and sing and produce a song 'World in Motion'. Bonnie was so nice to give up some of her precious time, on her birthday she came in to sing with us." Mavis Staples must be the talk of the Staples' family, recording and touring with Prince.

"She gonna make another record with Prince and she's gonna say some gospel stuff in there with the next record she do." ■ ..■.- ' : . '

But for now Pops' mind is on finding a record label for a new Staples Singers album — going “solo" doesn't seem to have gone to his head.

MURRAY CAMMICK