Mavis Staples to release an album featuring Levon Helm
Mavis Staples has just announced his intentions to release Carry Me Home, an album of live music he recorded with The Band’s drummer Levon Helm in Woodstock, New York. The recordings were made in 2011, and the tracks were among the last helm committed to tape before his death in 2012.
“It never crossed my mind that it might be the last time we’d see each other,” Staples admitted. “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 instrumentals are said to carry his stamp, character and conviction as any performance in Levon Helm’s career.
Helm toured with The Band and wrote about his account in This Wheel’s On Fire. He disputed Robbie Robertson‘s authority over The Band. In his book, Helm claimed that Robertson frequently walked away with more songwriting credits than he deserved, and felt that the guitarist edited The Last Waltz to make him look like the natural spokesperson for the group. During the footage, Robertson can be found singing into a microphone that was plugged in at a lower volume to the other microphones onstage.
The Band reunited during the 1980s for a series of concerts without Robertson, and the outfit released three albums that weathered the death of pianist Richard Manuel. Robertson rejoined bassist Rick Danko and keyboardist Garth Hudson for their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction, but Helm declined to appear, on account of Robertson’s involvement.
In other Staples related news, the singer featured prominently in Questlove’s Summer of Soul documentary that was released in 2021. The film focuses on the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival and features Staples in a rousing duet with her idol Mahalia Jackson.
Staples’s career goes back to the 1960s, and she later revealed that Bob Dylan had asked her father’s permission to marry her. And then in 2020, she worked with Jeff Tweedy on a new song called ‘All In It Together’ to benefit Chicago senior citizens who were fighting against the pandemic.
Stream Staples and Helm singing ‘You Got To Move’ below.
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