Roebuck Pops Staples scored a Billboard number one pop hit the day before he turned 61, and this episode traces the life that made such a late peak possible. Born in December 1914 near Winona, Mississippi, the youngest of 14 children, he grew up on a cotton plantation near Drew with an eighth-grade education, absorbing the guitar language of Delta neighbors like Charley Patton while choosing the gospel path over the juke joint. After marrying Oceola in 1935 he moved to Chicago, worked the stockyards, construction sites and a steel mill, sang with the Trumpet Jubilees, and in 1948 formed the Staple Singers with his children Pervis, Mavis, Yvonne and Cleotha.

We follow the family from recordings like Uncloudy Day and This May Be the Last Time, which the Rolling Stones adapted into The Last Time, through their move to Stax Records and the civil rights era anthems Respect Yourself, I’ll Take You There and Let’s Do It Again. The episode also covers Pops’s solo years, when he headlined blues festivals while refusing to sing the blues, his acting turns in True Stories and Wag the Dog, a Grammy at 80 for Father Father in 1995, and his death in December 2000 at 85 after a fall at home.

• How he separated the sin from the sound, borrowing Delta guitar technique while rejecting its despair
• Working the stockyards and steel mill while building a family gospel group in Chicago churches
• Why signing with Stax and singing protest soul felt like gospel work rather than a betrayal
• The stubbornness of a blues festival headliner who would not sing secular blues
• A legacy honored with an NEA National Heritage Fellowship, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and a guitar gifted to Marty Stuart