When Bob Dylan asked Mavis Staples to marry him in the 1960s, she turned him down and kept singing with her family. Born in Chicago on July 10, 1939, she joined the Staple Singers in 1950 alongside her father Pops and siblings Purvis, Cleotha and Yvonne, went full-time on the road after high school in 1957 following the hit Uncloudy Day, and helped the family evolve from church hymns to what they called message music as Pops built a friendship with Martin Luther King Jr.

This episode tracks the Stax Records years with Booker T. and the MGs, the number one singles I’ll Take You There and Let’s Do It Again, her 1972 divorce over refusing to abandon her career, two albums produced by Prince, a Mahalia Jackson tribute, and a late-career resurgence with Ry Cooder and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy that brought her first Grammy at over 70. By 2026 she is 87, the last surviving Staple Singer, and still releasing records like Sad and Beautiful World.

• Going to elementary school alongside Lou Rawls and Sam Cooke on Chicago’s South Side
• How Pops Staples’ tremolo guitar turned secular songs into spirituals
• Eight Top 40 hits between 1971 and 1975 on Stax Records
• Time Waits for No One and The Voice, produced by Prince at Paisley Park
• Rock and Roll, Blues and Gospel Hall of Fame inductions plus a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and Kennedy Center Honor