Track Listing

1. Down In Mississippi
2. Eyes On The Prize .
3. We Shall Not Be Moved
4. In The Mississippi River
5. On My Way
6. This Little Light
7. 99 and �
8. My Own Eyes
9. Turn Me Around
10. We'll Never Turn Back
11. I'll Be Rested
12. Jesus Is On The Main Line

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #40172 in Music
• Released on: 2007-04-23
• Number of discs: 1

Amazon.co.uk Review
As musical activists in the 1960s civil rights movement, the Staple Singers were powerful voices for equality and change. And more than 40 years after Pops's daughter Mavis spent a night in a West Memphis, Arkansas, jail at the behest of a racist cop, she still remembers the terror of the experience, as well as the counsel of Dr. Martin Luther King. That episode is at the centerpiece of "My Own Eyes," one of the most moving offerings on this collection of songs of racial struggle in the '50s and '60s, produced by guitarist Ry Cooder and featuring backing from the original Freedom Singers and Ladysmith Black Mambazo. Throughout, the album proves both emotionally chilling and spiritually uplifting. On J .B. Lenoir's "Down in Mississippi" and Marshall Jones's "In the Mississippi River," for example, Cooder makes fine use of pounding percussion and snaky electric guitar to capture the danger and fear inherent in the Deep South at the time, while the title song and "Jesus Is on the Main Line" draw on gospel and the traditional framework of church hymns to promise positive solutions. Staples, who ad-libs on several cuts, connecting the injustice of yesterday to the continuing marginalization of blacks in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, remains a remarkable performer, employing a throaty sensuality that rises from a deep well of tremulous emotion. If her album is musically uneven at times, her artistry and strength continue to shine as undimmed beacons. --Alanna Nash

CD Description
Mavis Staple's 2007 album, WE'LL NEVER TURN BACK is a stunning achievement from one of soul and gospel's most revered singers. Produced by Ry Cooder, the album is built around freedom songs of the civil rights movement--some are traditional ("Eyes on the Prize"), some are appropriated for the theme("99 and 1/2"), while others are originals ("I'll Be Rested"). As much a celebration of hard-won freedom as a reminder of past and current injustices, the album features stirring gospel choir vocals from both Ladysmith Black Mombazo and original members of the SNCC Freedom Singers. Yet the album isfirst and foremost a platform for Mavis Staples's stirring voice, one that is as much a liberating force as any protest. Cooder, to his credit, keeps things appropriately raw and immediate, and the band always positions Staples at the front of the line. As deeply moving as any album made in 2007, WE'LL NEVER TURN BACK is at once a call to arms, a new cadence for a new march, and the celebratory soundtrack for the jubilee on the other side of the mountain.

Customer Reviews

An inspirational force
As musical activists in the 1960s, The Staple Singers were powerful voices for equality and change. Working with Dr. Martin Luther King and singing in support of the Civil Right movement, they drew on their spirituality and the strength of the church to achieve social justice.

Mavis Staples' new album, We'll Never Turn Back, combines raw, emotional, contemporized versions of some of the freedom songs, along with other traditional songs, that provided the soundtrack to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and original material written by Staples and producer Ry Cooder. Having helped to define what is righteous and soulful in A merican music, this is Staples' most electrifyingly personal and polemical album of her career.

Ry Cooder and his son, Joaquin, drummer Jim Keltner, bassist Mike Elizando, many of the original Freedom Singers and South African choir Ladysmith Black Mambazo create soundscapes for Mavis' deep-in-the-well, heartfelt vocals to flourish. Mavis ad-libs spoken and sung commentary on several songs, connecting the lyrics to her own life, her family and the issues of the day.

Traditional numbers like This Little Light and 99 ½ are given a new lease of life by Staples' incredible voice and Ry Cooder's powerful arrangements, while the cover of Southern bluesman J.B. Lenoir's Down In Mississippi is an early stand out moment. The new material, however, more than matches up to the feeling of the traditional songs; the title track - co-written by Staples and Cooder - and the Cooder-penned I'll Be Rested both recall the pounding emotion of 1960s gospel music.

Not only a deeply personal account of Mavis' life from her childhood days in Mississippi, through the Civil Rights era and up to her current indignation over the continuing treatment of some Americans as second class citizens, We'll Never Turn Back is a wonderful homage to a period in which everyday citizens exhibited incredible bravery and wrought incredible changes to society, retrieving some of the most treasured voices in contemporary music and finding that behind it lies an inspirational force.

THIS is Soul music...
Accept no substitute.... Mavis & Ry together? Hallelujah, brothers and sisters! If we lived in Utopia, then this is what radio stations would A-list programme as "R'n'B", instead of the fidgety processed pap for shopgirls that they peddle. Yeah, I know that junk sells, but this is real people playing real instruments with a rare commodity in music today: humanity, soul... call it what you will. Essential for anyone who thinks they know music. Here endeth the lesson!

Mavis & Cooder Meet To Tell It Like It Is (4.5 stars)
What Mavis has chosen to do in this album is to reinterpret a number of classic anthems from the Civil Rights movement as well as including several compositions of her own, all of which are impeccably rendered by an extraordinary voice which may have lost some of its youthful shine but has gained a weary wisdom and lost none of its fierce commitment to tell it like it is, without frills but plenty of class.

Whether or not you share Staples' beliefs or consider yourself a long time fan of the Staples Singers, this is a phenomenal set of songs. If Mavis' voice wasn't enough the album is permeated by the magic of Ry Cooder's production who could not have been a better choice to give these songs, both, their gravitas and their groove. His guitar work in "Down In Mississippi" alone can justify buying this record. This is Cooder at his best, laying a sound as dense and ominous as a Louisiana swamp or as angelic as Gospel longings, as the songs require.

Another musician worthy of note is drummer Jim Keltner, Ry's compadre for so many years, who inhabit these songs with a powerful beat that will resonate in your chest even after the album's over. Along with his work in aforementioned "Down In Mississippi"--my pick from this album for one of the best songs of 07--he's exceptional in "Eyes On The Prize" or the slow shuffle of "In The Mississippi River."

All in all, this is not only a great album but a necessary one. What these songs may reawaken or introduce you to are words that have not lost their significance nor their relevance. Listen to Mavis sing those tracks already spoken for or "I'll Be Rested," "We'll Never Turn Back" or "On My Way." She'll show how much she knows about moving your soul and your body.