Mavis Staples and Levon Helm
Carry Me Home
Anti
2022
In the 1976 concert film The Last Waltz, at the end of a stunning version of The Weight, with The Staple Singers joining The Band, Mavis Staples inaudibly mouths “beautiful”. In 2011 only a few hundred people were lucky enough to be crammed into The Band’s drummer Levon Helm’s barn in Woodstock to hear Mavis and Levon end by singing the same song whilst sharing a stage for the last time (Levon died in 2012). That fitting bookend – with Mavis singing Levon’s opening part and Levon singing Pops Staples’s vocal part – can now be savoured by the rest of us with the release of Carry Me Home.
Levon Helm was thrilled to have Mavis Staples guest at one of the Saturday night Midnight Ramble concerts in his purpose-built barn. Reflecting on the occasion, Mavis said: “It never crossed my mind that it might be the last time we’d see each other. He was so full of life and so happy that week. He was the same old Levon I’d always known, just a beautiful spirit inside and out.” The Band/Staple Singers connection really began when the latter first recorded The Weight on their first album for the Stax label in 1968. They re-recorded it in 1994, and it was the finale to Mavis’s 2017 I’ll Take You There: An All-Star Concert Celebration, joined by everyone on the show, including Emmylou Harris, Aaron Neville, Taj Mahal and Otis Clay.
One of The Staple Singers’ songs on Carry Me Home is a rolling, rock-solid version of Move Along Train impeccably sung by Mavis (she sings solo lead on everything except The Weight). It was written by Pops and first recorded in 1966, later covered by Levon on Electric Dirt (2009) and then sung by Mavis on Love for Levon (2013), a live benefit concert recording to save the same barn they had performed in two years previously. The album’s title comes from the last line of the chorus – “He’s gonna save me and carry me home” – unavoidably loaded with the poignancy of Levon’s terminal illness.
Mavis Staples and Levon Helm put on a commanding performance for this live recording. Their soulful vitality runs throughout Carry Me Home, and nowhere more so than on the traditional gospel song This May Be The Last Time; a Staple Singers single released in 1954, “re-adapted,” a decade later by The Rolling Stones. Here, it’s performed by Mavis and Levon with a relaxed sway, riding on a solid, delta swamp groove. It exemplifies just how well the two bands melded together – a big sound but with no clutter – and the likes of Amy Helm and Mavis’ sister Yvonne on backing vocals and guitarists of the calibre of Rick Holmstrom and Larry Campbell. It’s another song with obvious poignancy, and the video of an informal off-stage version, with just the guitarists, is an unmissable slice of musical heaven.
This My Country, a vital song of the civil rights era, directly addressing the views of those who sought to justify racism and racial inequality, is a tour de force. The original 1968 version by The Impressions, written by Curtis Mayfield, is so perfect that hardly anyone has attempted to cover it. It may have taken Mavis over 40 years to get around to tackling This My Country, but she inevitably makes it sound like it was written for her to sing, carried along by a punchy, driving arrangement with full-on brass and superb vocal backing.
By comparison, Bob Dylan’s You Got to Serve Somebody has been widely covered, but you will struggle to find a better version than Mavis and Levon’s. Musically it has a sensibility that’s not unlike later period Dylan, although this version has a more dynamic feel with Mavis delivering an altogether more earthy, compelling gospel-infused rendition. Another civil rights standard, I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free, made famous by Nina Simone, also gets its first Mavis treatment (Levon included it on 2009’s Electric Dirt). Here it has a swagger, is less plaintive and more demanding.
Carry Me Home is infused with shared affection and mutual respect. You get to relish the combination of Mavis Staples’s voice, with its utterly unique mix of grit and tenderness, occupying a pivotal place at the intersection of gospel, soul and civil rights, and Levon Helm channelling his deft, discerning playing and accumulated know-how with and through the collective assembly of musicians. It is a performance of gusto and elation, belying Levon Helm’s ill-health and standing as the wonderful final thread of their shared musical connection.
Carry Me Home is out now.
Amazon | Norman Records | Rough Trade