Published at 5:30 PM on August 27, 2008

By Henry Freedland

Mavis Staples live album emerges from Hideout

She might be most famous for fronting family band The Staple Singers, a group often credited with providing a spiritual soundtrack to the civil rights movement, but Mavis Staples has been releasing solo work with the same soulful ferocity since the late '60s. And it's about time you noticed.

While 2005's Have a Little Faith and 2007's We'll Never Turn Back brought some updated electronic production to back Staples' powerful vocal stylings, a new live album entitled Mavis Staples Live: Hope at the Hideout, slated to come out from Anti-/Epitaph this Nov. 4, throws it back to the fiery days of yore. (For those of you on Coincidence Watch 2008: Yes, that hope-themed Election Day release leaves little doubt, if there was any, about which box Staples' ballot is heading toward.)

Hope will present 13 songs from Staples' 2007 sold-out set at Chicago's The Hideout. And that performance, which used material from all along the singer's 52-year career, is apparently a worthy one of entering posterity's handbag: it was unanimously praised by the Chicago Sun Times, Time Out Chicago and Daytrotter.

Tracklisting:

  1. For What It's Worth
  2. Eyes on the Prize
  3. Down in Mississippi
  4. Wade in the Water
  5. Waiting For My Child
  6. This Little Light
  7. Why Am I Treated So Bad
  8. Freedom Highway
  9. We Shall Not Be Moved
  10. Circle Intro (encore)
  11. Will The Circle Be Unbroken (encore)
  12. On My Way (encore)
  13. I'll Take You There (encore)

Related links:
Feature: Mavis Staples - Faith in Hard Times
Feature: Mavis Staples - #14 on Paste Signs of Life 2004
MavisStaples.com

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