Sympathetic characters are often what turn good music documentaries into great ones, yet few hit the level of congeniality that director Jessica Edwards captures in her heart-warming portrait of soul legend Mavis Staples. Mavis! follows a welcome trend –most notably in Searching for Sugar Man and 20 Feet From Stardom — of music docs in which the appeal of personality and story supersede fame. Among a collection of stand-out biographies that premiered at South by Southwest, Mavis! was the feel-good star, a story of survival, family, change and adapting to it.
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Mavis! embraces the singer’s history — back to the early 1950s when she started in Chicago churches with her father Pops and siblings in The Staple Singers — and connects it to her place in music today. Edwards rightfully aims to present the 75-year-old in the pantheon of greats, one whose journey started long before The Staples Singers’ secular soul hits in the ’70s. Performance footage — gospel clips in black and white, ’70s TV shows, a recent Newport Folk Festival gig — points to the singularity of Staples’ vocal power and interpretive skill.
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In the last several years, Staples’ career has been boosted through her work with Wilco‘s Jeff Tweedy, and the film lovingly shows how he has created a surrogate musical family for Staples, one that allows her to create with a level of comfort similar to the one she enjoyed with her late father. There is no villain in Mavis! — only hope and thankfulness that glow from start to finish.
This story originally appeared in the April 4th issue of Billboard.