Mavis! | Little White Lies

Mavis!

19 Feb 2016 / Released: 19 Feb 2016

Words by Elisa Adams

Directed by Jessica Edwards

Starring Adam Ayres, Gene Barge, and Mavis Staples

A woman singing passionately into a microphone on stage, surrounded by bright lights.
A woman singing passionately into a microphone on stage, surrounded by bright lights.
3

Anticipation.

Over an hour of great blues and gospel music? Yes please!

4

Enjoyment.

Could not stop dancing to the music. Mavis’ inspiration knows no bounds.

3

In Retrospect.

Not as spiritually uplifting as it could have been.

This cheery pro­file of the gospel-singing maven is worth see­ing for its incred­i­ble per­for­mance footage.

Mavis Sta­ples might not be an instant­ly recog­nis­able name if blues, gospel and soul isn’t your bag. How­ev­er, give your­self just a few moments of the 1972 hit I’ll Take You There’ and you’ll hear the voice that has inspired many to take up a career in music. Jes­si­ca Edwards’ new doc­u­men­tary Mavis! aims to put a face to the name by rais­ing the ques­tion of why – out of a group of five excep­tion­al per­form­ers – was there some­thing spe­cial about Mavis?

From the film’s open­ing scene we gath­er that music isn’t just a job for Sta­ples, but its part of her life force. Her devo­tion not only to music, but to fam­i­ly, reli­gion and civ­il rights, remains at the heart of the film. As she says: I’ll stop singing when I got noth­ing else to say, and that ain’t gonna hap­pen.” With a career span­ning six decades and near­ly five of those as part of The Sta­ple Singers, much of the film is ded­i­cat­ed to study­ing how the group’s heady mix of gospel and soul affect­ed the music world.

While this gives us a great van­tage on to a spe­cif­ic peri­od of music his­to­ry and how The Sta­ples became an inte­gral force in the Civ­il Rights Move­ment, the film does at times lose its focus on this cen­tral point of dis­cov­er­ing who Mavis was and is. And that’s the rub, as this is not a doc­u­men­tary about expos­ing the poten­tial pit­falls of a life in the music indus­try, more a cel­e­bra­tion of some­one for whom music and fam­i­ly is enough.

It would be remiss to not say that the high­light of the doc­u­men­tary is the music. Sta­ples’ voice, although under­stand­ably huski­er than it once was, has not aged like many oth­er singers of her gen­er­a­tion. It’s still just as engag­ing, and the film is packed of superb per­for­mances which make the film worth watch­ing. A scene when she sings to one-time drum­mer of The Band, Lev­on Helm, at his house and at the end of his life, that the true pow­er of her voice shines through. The pre­tence of per­for­mance is bro­ken to reveal how song can become true expres­sion of love toward a friend.

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