Mavis Staples

(HUDSON, N.Y.) – Mavis Staples, a scion of America’s first family of socially conscious soul-gospel music and a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, brings her contemporary sound, crafted in collaboration with Jeff Tweedy of Wilco, to Club Helsinki Hudson on Sunday, February 22, at 8pm.

Even after achieving the status of a living legend for her work with the Staple Singers and her solo achievements, Mavis Staples has enjoyed an entirely new chapter in the past five years since teaming up with Jeff Tweedy for a series of Grammy Award-winning recordings, including 2011’s “You Are Not Alone” and 2013’s “One True Vine.”

The Staple Singers, led by patriarch Roebuck “Pops” Staples, began life as a folk-gospel group in the early 1950s, on the strength of his songwriting and his daughter Mavis’s gluey, elastic vocals. They achieved critical and commercial success in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and became inextricably identified with the Civil Rights Movement, owing to Pops’s close friendship with Dr. Martin Luther King. They sang at demonstrations and rallies and marches, and recorded songs by politically oriented songwriters including Bob Dylan and Stephen Stills.

Mavis Staples began making solo recordings in the late 1960s. She achieved great renown for her performance with the Staple Singers in The Band’s farewell concert, “The Last Waltz,” captured in the Martin Scorsese film. She is a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner and a National Heritage Fellowship Award recipient.  VH1 named her one of the 100 Greatest Women of Rock and Roll, and Rolling Stone listed her as one of the 100 Greatest Singers of All Time.

For reservations in The Restaurant or in the club call 518.828.4800.