Staples’ Moving Gospel Gets a Rise Out of Her Audience

Take gospel music from the church to the concert house, and it often sounds like its heart got lost in the transplant, losing its immediacy when it lacks a participating audience.

It seemed that might be the case Friday at UC Irvine’s Barclay Theater as Mavis Staples sang the gospel catalog of her mentor Mahalia Jackson to a respectful but apparently embalmed audience. By mid-show, however, with a scorchingly impassioned “Precious Lord Take My Hand,” Staples had moved the audience to a standing ovation, and visibly moved several to tears.

Staples, whose glorious, gritty contralto fueled such Staple Singers hits as “I’ll Take You There,” and more recently graced two funk-laden albums overseen by the former Prince, grew up loving Jackson’s music, and perhaps no one, aside from Aretha Franklin, is as worthy a successor to Jackson as Staples.

Her show Friday was bereft of her secular hits, instead being devoted almost entirely to songs Jackson popularized, with most drawn from Staples’ 1996 tribute album to her, “Spirituals & Gospel.”

Accompanied solely, and soulfully, by keyboardist Tony Dyson, Staples delivered a funky reading of “Wade in the Water,” a moody, minor-key “Troubles of the World” and others, with even the over-performed and usually overwrought “Amazing Grace” sounding fresh and emotionally direct.