The Gospel according to Mavis

When Bob Dylan was 21 years old, he met the Staple Singers backstage at a folk and gospel concert. After a brief meeting with Mavis, the group’s young Chicago beauty, he hollered down the lunch line to her father, Roebuck “Pops” Staples, shouting, “I wanna marry Mavis!” The soulful patriarch had a surprising response for the young singer-songwriter. Amid a crowd snickering at Dylan’s blushing proclamation, Pops shot back, “Don’t tell me! Tell Mavis!”

Later Dylan did, and the pair hung out and swapped songs at shows, but in the end the gospel singer shied away from the rising rock star’s overtures. The 1960s would see their paths diverge in many ways. Later Staples told The Washington Post that despite her “Blowin’ in the Wind”-loving father’s approval, the color barrier was simply too much for her. She was worried Dr. King would not approve.

Staples’ latest sonic suitor is Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy—one sure to make many critics’ short lists of modern Dylans. Years ago, Tweedy co-wrote with Woody Guthrie by setting music to the storied folk hero’s dusted-off lyrics—compositions Dylan claims a dying Guthrie promised to him from a hospital bed in upstate New York. Like Dylan, Tweedy pursued Staples, too. After seeing her in concert just once, Tweedy called her manager and declared his intentions. He had to produce Staples’ next record. That record, You Are Not Alone, is a gorgeous force of nature—deep, steady and true.

Staples and Tweedy cover a lot of ground in 13 tracks that include a clap-along take on Rev. Gary Davis’ “I Belong to the Band,” a solid-gold soul version of Allen Toussaint’s “Last Train” and a show-stopping a cappella workout of the great gospel standard “Wonderful Savior.”

But the heart of the record is the tune Tweedy wrote with Staples in mind, the title track “You Are Not Alone.” Tweedy’s production is warm but minimal throughout, and here he really lets Staples’ vocals pour through as she sings, “You’re not alone. Every night, I stand in your place. Every tear, on every face, tastes the same. A broken dream, a broken heart, isolated and afraid. Open up, this is a raid, I’m gonna get it through to you. You’re not alone.”

This is a bold song, but Staples’ singing has always been about bravery. She began singing in church at such a young age she was too small for the congregation to see; her parents stood her on a chair to perform. Her work with her family and the classic Stax hits “Respect Yourself” and “I’ll Take You There” speak for themselves, but part of Staples’ charm has always been her ability to take so much faith and complexity and mold it into something so solid. She’s not only a praise-Jesus gospel singer, a socially conscious folkie and an ultra-cool R&B queen. Staples deftly sifts and blends the voluminous annals of modern music into one righteous voice, a century of verse that sounds just like honey. Dylan has spent the last 50 years chasing much of the same, as if each about-face, each mysterious twist and turn in his music and his image stands as a new marriage proposal—as if Dylan is still that young kid crying out to Pops, “I wanna marry Mavis!”

The sinner and the saint.

Staples and Dylan remain my favorite celebrity couple that never lasted. Maybe in another time, one not fraught with racial prejudices, theirs would have been a romance for the ages. Wishfully, I still picture them together somehow, but in a time not far from now, leaning back on a breezy porch in Arnaudville or some place as quiet, their wrinkled hands laced together and overlapping on the armrests of a couple of rockers gracefully sanded down by the decades, a half-empty bottle of Burgundy breathing on top of a nearby Bible. She would call him “Bobby.” He would call her “Babe.” They’d be older and slower, but blissful, together at last and content with singing to the sunset.

Mavis Staples performs live at Manship Theatre on Feb. 24. Visit manshiptheatre.org for tickets. mavisstaples.com