Margo Price Teams Up with Mavis Staples and Asia Victoria for New Single Benefiting Reproductive Rights, “Fight To Make It” (Video below)
Sixtytwo years ago, before rock’n’roll had ignited, a 16-year-old took the lead on a huge-selling hit. “Well, well, well, Lord,” she sang, “they tell me I got a home beyond the skies.” Her voice sounded years older than her age, raw with longing, deeper than the seas. Uncloudy Day kickstarted the Staple Singers’ career and was Mavis Staples’ big, bold hello to the world. (source The Guardian.com)
But it is David Bowie that she is desperate to talk about today, surprisingly. “I’ve been thinking of him. He was the ultimate gentleman and musician. I was opening for Prince, when he came into the dressing room, and said: ‘There she is, that beautiful lady,’ and, oh, I just melted!” She can’t countenance that Bowie might have been excited to meet her. “You just don’t think that certain people know you, you know? To remember him holding my hand … I did not sleep that night!”
That voice had many fans though – as well as Bowie and Prince, there was Bob Dylan. “It was the most mysterious thing I’d ever heard,” he told AARP Magazine of Uncloudy Day as recently as last year. He first heard the Staple Singers on the radio in 1953, and has often mentioned their influence on him ever since. “It was like the fog rolling in … I knew who Mavis was without having to be told. Her singing just knocked me out.”
Songwriters Margo Price, Mavis Staples and Asia Victoria have teamed up for a new single that will benefit reproductive rights, “Fight To Make It.”
All proceeds earned from the song, via Bandcamp sales, will go to Noise For Now, which is a national initiative that supports grassroots organizations and abortion access.
“The song is an affirmation of perseverance and solidarity for those whose human rights continue to be taken,” says a press statement.
“Bobby would always say: ‘Pops has a velvety voice, but Mavis get rough sometimes,’” Staples says. It’s a line she has used in previous interviews, but they did “court awhile”, after meeting on a TV show in New York in the early 60s. “We would write letters back and forth, because we wouldn’t see each other until we were on a festival together,” she adds. “And we’d smooch!” Dylan also proposed to her, but Staples turned him down, feeling she was too young.
They’ve stayed in touch through the years, duetting on the gospel song Gonna Change My Way of Thinking on Dylan’s 1979 album, Slow Train Coming; they last physically met in 2002. “I often think about what would have happened if I’d married Bobby, though,” she says. “If we’d had some little plum-crushers, how our lives would be. The kids would be singing now, and Bobby and I would be holding each other up.”
