ALBUM: The Staple Singers, ‘Freedom Highway Complete – Recorded Live at Chicago’s New Nazareth Church’
At last month’s Academy Awards ceremony, Selma, Ava DuVernay’s exquisite biopic of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., ended the night with only one Oscar to its name. Yet the fact that it won the award for Best Original Song, for John Legend and Common’s “Glory,” at least felt like the appropriate choice. After all, the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s was inextricably linked with music, from the protest songs written by participants and observers, to the spirituals and folk tunes whose meanings resonated with the struggle for freedom.
This interplay can be heard clearly on the Staple Singers’ Freedom Highway Complete – Recorded Live at Chicago’s New Nazareth Church, expanded and reissued by Legacy Recordings on the 50th anniversary of the original album’s release. The record captures a service by the acclaimed family gospel group at a church in their hometown of Chicago. The date of the recording — April 9, 1965 — is significant, as it falls less than three weeks after the historic March 21-25 voting rights march from Selma to Birmingham, and just over a month after “Bloody Sunday” (March 7), when Alabama state troopers violently attacked participants during the first attempt at the march to Birmingham.
While the Selma marches are mentioned only briefly — after all, this is a church service, not a rally — they nevertheless hang over the performance, whether explicitly (“We Shall Overcome”) or more subtly (the defiant chorus of “Samson and Delilah”: “If I had my way, I’d tear this building down”). Most notable, however, is the song that gives the album its name. That April 9 show at the New Nazareth Church marked the debut performance of “Freedom Highway,” a tribute to the marchers that family patriarch Roebuck “Pops” Staples credits to divine inspiration: “From that march, Word was revealed, and a song was composed.”
Freedom Highway Complete submerges the listener in the performance, remixing in ambient noise from the congregation, like coughing, shifting in the pews, or shouts of “amen!” and “sing that song,” that was edited out for the album’s 1965 release. As the “complete” in the title suggests, the reissued album presents the service in its entirety, including Pops’ between-song patter and testifying, a closing benediction from New Nazareth pastor Rev. Hopkins, and a seven-minute offertory in the middle of the set, in which Rev. Hopkins berates his congregation for not contributing enough money to the offering plate. (“The Staple Singers is one of the best groups in this country, but you will not support them. Let’s tell it like it is. And this is their home!”) The sound quality isn’t perfect, due to the primitive state of mid-’60s portable recording equipment and the non-standard acoustics of the church. Given the setup, however, it’s all the more impressive how the Staples’ impeccable harmonies shine through, as if beamed directly from heaven itself.
The album opens with Pops introducing the group, previewing the material (“We’re going to be singing old spirituals, maybe a folk number and freedom song”), and reassuring the congregation that, despite the recording equipment, they should feel free to say amen, clap their hands, and stomp their feet. (“If the Spirit says ‘shout,’ shout!”) The Staples warm up their audience with the familiar, upbeat “When the Saints Go Marching In,” performed as a call-and-response between Pops and children Pervis, Yvonne, and Mavis. The rest of their set blends originals (“Help Me Jesus,” “When I’m Gone,” “Tell Heaven”) with gospel favorites (Hank Williams’ “The Funeral,” Rev. W. Herbert Brewster’s “Jesus is All,” a stunning version of Thomas A. Dorsey’s “Precious Lord, Take My Hand”), led alternately by Pops’ sage country tenor and Mavis’s powerhouse alto.
While the Staple Singers’ material in this performance is sacred in nature, their performances test the boundaries of what would typically be thought of as church music. Pops’ grooving blues guitar (learned from the legendary Charley Patton) and Mavis’s raw, throaty vocals weave together to create music that’s surprisingly rocking (“Samson and Delilah”) and even kind of sexy (“View the Holy City,” “What You Gonna Do?”). “I want to make heaven my home, but I want to enjoy myself a little down here too,” Pops comments at one point during the set, and one of the factors that makes the Staples’ music so compelling is that it addresses the whole of human experience, not just the holy. The inclusion of two secular songs, “We Shall Overcome” and “Freedom Highway,” point to the fact that the group was already exploring beyond strictly religious material and thinking about how God’s message could be applied to contemporary circumstances.
In fact, the song “Freedom Highway,” premiered at this service, would be a turning point for the group, breaking out of the gospel niche and becoming an anthem for the civil rights movement. Within two years of the April 9, 1965 service at New Nazareth, the group would be featuring on the pop charts with songs like “Why (Am I Treated So Bad)?” and a cover of Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.” By the early ’70s, they would be releasing major hits like “Respect Yourself,” “I’ll Take You There,” and “Let’s Do It Again,” the last of which was written for them by fellow gospel veteran Curtis Mayfield. Yet while the Staple Singers had left straight gospel behind, they remained committed to singing songs with real meaning behind them. Pop music simply allowed them to move beyond the church and bring their message to the whole world.
The Staples Singers’ Freedom Highway Complete… is out today from Sony Legacy. To order your copy, click here!
