Paying Her Respects to Mahalia Jackson

As a girl growing up in Chicago, Mavis Staples was so enthralled by Mahalia Jackson’s singing that her father had to warn her to keep out of his collection of the great gospel singer’s albums while he was away at work.

“He didn’t want me to break his records. He would come home and I would ask him: ‘Daddy, would you play some Miss Mahalia Jackson?’ ”

Roebuck “Pops” Staples was glad to oblige; Mavis, then about 8, had started performing with the Staple Singers, the family gospel group he led--and, at 84, still does. What better model than gospel’s definitive voice?

Mavis Staples’ affection for Jackson, to whom she will pay tribute with an all-gospel concert Friday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, was cemented a few years later when Staples met her.

On a Friday, Pops announced that the Staple Singers would sing the following Monday on the same bill as Jackson at a Chicago church. That gave Mavis, then about 11, the whole weekend to simmer in excitement and mull over what she would say to Jackson.

The encounter proved as memorable as any small hero-worshiper could have hoped. Staples, now 59, glowed with the recollection, re-creating the dialogue in tones that captured a small girl’s wonder and the familial warmth of Jackson.

“My sister and I were in the same dressing room with her, where we put our choir robes on,” Staples said in a recent telephone interview from her home in Chicago. “The first thing I said: ‘Miss Mahalia Jackson, I sing too.’ She said, ‘That’s gooood. I’m going to be listening when you sing.’ ”

After the gospel group’s opening set, Jackson was gracious--”You’re a good little singer”--then became stern when she saw Mavis head for the dressing room door. “I was going to go outside and jump rope before [Jackson] came on. We kids liked the music, but we didn’t like to hear the preachers talking, so we’d sneak our jump ropes to church.

“She said, ‘Where you going? Come here; sit your little butt down. You’re not going nowhere. Don’t you know you’re damp? When you go home, tell your mama to give you one of your brother’s T-shirts and dry off, ‘cause you won’t have no voice. You want to grow up and sing a long time, don’t you?’ ”

The next day, Jackson, who also lived in Chicago, called Staples’ mother to make sure her warning about protecting the voice after a performance had gotten through: “ ‘Did your baby tell you what I told her last night?’ ” Staples recalled.

Putting on a T-shirt right after a show to absorb sweat remains part of Mavis Staples’ performance regimen to this day.

A Solo Voice and a Piano

Mavis’ tribute album to Mahalia Jackson, “Spirituals & Gospel,” arrived in 1996; she said the idea had never occurred to her until she had a conversation with producer John Snyder during a break in a recording session for her guest spot on an album by the Memphis Horns.

“Somehow we got to talking about Mahalia Jackson. He said, ‘You love her so much and know her so well. It would be good for you to do a tribute to her.’ ”

Snyder helped Staples get a deal with Verve Records and paired her with blues musician Lucky Peterson, who backs her on organ and piano.

“This is my first time recording this way, but it’s not the first time I’ve wanted to do it,” Staples said of the stripped down, one-voice, one-instrument recording approach. Her tribute shows follow the same format, with Tony Dyson, an accompanist for Chicago gospel choirs, taking over for Peterson.

The agenda, Staples said, is gospel, and nothing but. Virtually the entire program is given to songs Jackson sang.

“People have yelled out [for] ‘I’ll Take You There.’ I say, ‘Wait a minute; there wasn’t any ‘I’ll Take You There’ while Sister Mahalia was here.’ I don’t even go there. If the spirit comes, I’ll do “Oh Happy Day” [a 1969 pop-gospel hit for the Edwin Hawkins Singers], because people like that song.”

Staples, who commands a rich, hefty alto, is one of the most acclaimed voices of her generation. But she puts Jackson in a class apart.

“I don’t try to sing like her at all,” Staples said. “I wouldn’t dare. This was, to me, the greatest gospel singer that ever lived. Nobody would come close to her.”

* Mavis Staples sings Friday at the Irvine Barclay Theatre, 4242 Campus Drive. 8 p.m. $18-$22. (949) 854-4646.