Back in the 1960s, Bob Dylan briefly dated and even proposed to Mavis Staples.Now, fifty years later, the two music legends will reunite for an extensive US … I did a show in Minneapolis, but I’m not ready to go back to Paisley Park yet.”. has received mostly positive reviews from critics. The soul singer and civil rights activist talks collaborating with Bob Dylan, memories of Martin Luther King, Jr., and a new album, If All I Was Was Black, out … “Everybody came to our house when they played Chicago. 9. I knew he needed an operation, but wouldn’t have it because the Jehovah’s Witnesses won’t let you have a blood transfusion. In this article: Bob Dylan is back for another round of tour dates behind his latest album Triplicate.The iconic singer/songwriter will bring the legendary Mavis Staples along for the fall tour, which takes place throughout October and November. We urge you to turn off your ad blocker for The Telegraph website so that you can continue to access our quality content in the future. Next weekend, Staples will be taking the fight to Glastonbury, a festival she last performed at in 2015 and to which she is “excited” to return. When I tell her she sounds like a woman preparing to march into the Oval Office and toss the 45th American president out of the window, she dissolves into delighted, thigh-slapping giggles: “Ooh, yes! The heart he had stuck to the back had faded. The Detroit News has an interview today with singer Mavis Staples about the time a young Bob Dylan proposed marriage to her. So, stop on in for a doggone good time!!! She also has grim tales to tell of racist abuse – including a near-fatal encounter after the family pulled into a late-night petrol station where Pops punched an attendant for being “very nasty”. “I will never forget going to a shoe shop with my sister, looking for smart stage clothes and being told to try them on behind a filthy old sack of a curtain,” she recalls. I wanted to say some Jehovah’s Witnesses think it’s OK if you use your own blood… but I never got to talk to him. “I found a picture he gave me the other day. It was back in the early days of folk music, even before Dylan… I didn’t really understand what they were telling me about a band of cartoon monkeys. “I would have walked away if my manager hadn’t told me how successful he was. Have a Little Faith was her first release after Pops Staples died in 2000, and Mavis charged $40,000 on … You need to be a subscriber to join the conversation. In the wake of this news, Mary Lucia reflects on these iconic artists. “So crazy! Tonight Mavis, who once rejected a Bob Dylan marriage proposal because she was 'too young', played an 8 song set opening for Bob Dylan. She needn’t have fretted, because she’s the perfect choice of acts to open a Bob Dylan concert. It's a Sin... to steal: how Pet Shop Boys’ hit single ignited the music industry's strangest feud, Beyond Britney Spears: the troubled female stars who also deserve an apology, Sexualised, mocked, and fed to the wolves: why the Britney Spears story shames us all. They’ve stayed in touch through the years, duetting on the gospel song Gonna Change My Way of Thinking on Dylan’s 1979 album, Slow Train Coming; they last physically met in 2002. They might’ve been Mr. and Mrs. Zimmerman. Bob Dylan’s and Mavis Staples’ paths first crossed 55 years ago, and if he’d gotten his way they might have been tied in marriage. 10/17 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Eccles Theater 10/18 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Eccles Theater 10/21 – Denver, CO @ 1STBank Center Mavis Staples Yvonne Staples Roebuck "Pops" Staples Pervis Staples Jeff Tweedy Chuck D Julian Bond Bonnie Raitt Bob Dylan Levon Helm Marty Stuart Al Bell Prince Steve Cropper Sharon Jones. Why you never dance that way with me?’ And he would lift me up in the air and blow raspberries on my stomach until we all laughed.”Â, Born in 1914, Roebuck “Pops” Staples was raised on a cotton plantation, and learned to play the guitar from the bluesman Charlie Patton, who lived on the neighbouring property. 7:30 PM. When that man – I will not say his name – got into the White House, I knew I needed to keep on being a protest singer.”. The deaths of her father (in 2000) and sister Yvonne (in April 2018) hit her hard. Find the latest tracks, albums, and images from Bob Dylan & Mavis Staples. She tells me they both keep fit by boxing, and repeats a line she’s used before: “He’s so little, I could knock him out with one punch!” The Staple Singers had disco hits in the Eighties with covers of Talking Heads’ Life During Wartime and Slippery People. Staples recalls having fun in hotels, using her deep voice to fool room service into thinking she was her father. “People say I’m political,” she asks. “I want to cook him dinner” But then I loved the song he wrote!”, She is glad that a new generation of artists is welcoming her into a fresh cycle of protests. In the Nineties, Mavis forged deeper into a solo career: in 1993, Prince – who had produced her 1989 album Time Waits for No One – co-produced another album, The Voice, based on a series of letters she had sent to him about her life. Everything was bare. After King’s assassination in 1968, the family carried on the fight, injecting a righteous funk into Seventies anthems like Respect Yourself and I’ll Take You There. King's favorite song was written by Mavis' father, Pops Staples, entitled, Why Am I Treated So Bad?'. Years later, Mavis asked Bob, but this time he was already married. What’s wrong with their momma?’ Well nothing was wrong!”, Pops encouraged his children to sing together from an early age – Staples’s strikingly deep voice first reduced a church congregation to tears when she was just eight years old. He came on the train from New York, ordered a Chinese takeaway, hadn’t even written a song for me yet,” she recalls. Staples was born in Chicago, Illinois, on July 10, 1939. . Whether you are a regular or just stopping in, Hair of the Dog will make you feel right at home. “That singer,” he said, was “pulling things out of my soul that I never knew were there.”. She never remarried or had children and looks old for the first time in an hour when she admits: “I do get lonely, so lonely.” In recent interviews, she’s admitted wishing she had married Bob Dylan when he proposed in the Sixties. By using this website, you accept our. Other protest songs, such as Freedom Highway and When Will We Be Paid, were clear calls for social justice, with Mavis belting out: “We been beat up, called names, shot down and stoned/ Every time we do right, somebody say we’re wrong/ Tell me when will we be paid for the work we’ve done. When they weren't together, she said, they would write each other letters and talk on the phone. Bob Dylan and his band Mavis Staples Pavilion. Mavis! Their commitment to a cause didn’t make them stuffy, though. Donor Gates Open. One of my friends wrote to say, ‘Do you know this Lori Lightfoot is a lesbian?’ I said, ‘Yeah I know it, and I voted for her too!’ I’m glad she won because it seemed to me she wanted change.”Â, Staples smiles at me, but her eyes are wet now. Photo; Hilary Scott. Her zodiac sign is Cancer. I saw how thin he was getting. Tickets: $160/130 Lawn: $49** **Lawn ticket prices are increased by $5 on the day of the show. 5:00 PM. Find out more, The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Whether she’s singing a cover of “For What It’s Worth” by Buffalo Springfield, or “Build A Bridge,” a song from her upcoming album If All I Was Was Black, catching a Mavis Staples set always feels like you’re sitting in church. Right out that window!” If Staples is deadly serious about her mission, she is wonderfully down-to-earth about herself. Dressed in leggings, trainers and a Hozier T-shirt, she cartoon-swoons over the handsome waiter who brings her ginger tea, then leans in with lively recollections of growing up with Aretha Franklin, working with Prince, being honoured by Barack Obama and recording with “young folks” such as Arcade Fire, Gorillaz and Hozier, “such a beautiful young man!”, I can see how she earned her childhood nickname, Bubbles: her optimistic, open-hearted company is emotionally carbonating. When Mavis graduated from what is now Paul Robeson High School in 1957, The Staple Singers took their music on the road. 4:30 PM. Born on 10th July, 1939 in Chicago, IL, she is famous for The Staple Singers. She says she had tried to contact Prince (who she assures me “smelled of raspberries”) in the days before his death, from an accidental overdose of painkillers, in 2016. “He gave me a special number to call him on but I had lost it. Bob Dylan and Mavis Staples have announced a show on Oct. 25 at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. Her old friend Aretha Franklin – who she calls “Ree” – began calling her more frequently following Yvonne’s death.