In memoriam

Roebuck `Pops' Staples, 1915 - 2000

by Ted Drozdowski

As the patriarch of family gospel group the Staple Singers, Roebuck "Pops" Staples -- who died December 19 at age 85, following a concussion sustained in a fall near his suburban Chicago home -- dedicated his life to lifting hearts toward heaven. But he could break them, too.

GOSPEL KING: Pops Staples and his family sang the soundtrack of '60's protest movements.

One of the most powerful performances of the short-lived Rhythm & Blues Festival at Newport was a 1996 set by Pops, alone with his guitar, playing the red-dirt Mississippi blues while he told the story of how he'd needed to drop out of school as a boy to help his family pick cotton. Even though he worked from dawn to dusk in the fields around his native Drew, Mississippi, it was all his family could do to keep meager food on the table. Pops said he realized he might spend his whole life bending his back under the Southern sun and never own a thing. When he heard about the prosperity former Mississippians were finding in Chicago, he decided to go. On his salary of pennies a day, it took him more than three years to save $8 for the bus ticket. But tears welled in his eyes when he told the crowd about the beautiful view out the back window of that Greyhound, as he watched the plantations shrink in the distance.

By the mid '50s, the singing group Pops formed with his daughters Mavis and Cleotha and his son Pervis was popular in Chicago churches. But after they recorded "Uncloudy Day" for the VeeJay label, their full-time musical career accelerated. In the '60s their gospel took on the trappings of protest music, a soundtrack for the civil-rights and antiwar movements of the time. And after they signed with the Stax label in 1968, they had a string of eight Top 40 pop hits, including "Respect Yourself" and 1971's number-one hit "I'll Take You There." Although there were no further hits after 1975, the Staple Singers remained giants of the gospel circuit, but they appeared less frequently as the '90s went on and Pops became fragile.

Both the Staple Singers and Pops as a solo artist received several Grammy awards during their long careers. And in 1999 the group was drafted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Pops accepted with these remarks: "Always hold on to your dreams, and whatever you do, don't give up. See what I've done after all these years."