Perfect gospel, with soul
Mavis Staples, for all her esteem as one of the Staple Singers, still doesn't get enough credit as a solo artist. She's one of the true giants of gospel, R&B, and soul, and yet at 68, she's not as widely celebrated as some of her contemporaries.
You could blame it on her spotty discography: Her two latest solo albums, 2004's "Have a Little Faith" and last year's "We'll Never Turn Back," are among her best and most acclaimed, but there were a lot of hits and misses along the way.
There's no denying, now or ever, her greatness live, though. All it takes is one show to remind you of just how good she is, and that show happened to be at the Berklee Performance Center Friday night.
You could watch her all day. Easily excitable, she would sling her hands like she was holding something too hot to handle. She burst into fits of vocal spasms that sounded as if she was about to speak in tongues. And sometimes she plain forgot where she was in the program; she was just too into the moment.
Little things like that amount to a fantastic evening of live music, and Staples, when she burrowed deep and mined the pit of her lower register, was unrivaled on songs such as "Wade in the Water," "The Weight," and "Why? (Am I Treated so Bad)." She locked into glorious harmonies with her trio of backup singers - young soprano Chavonne Morris, Donny Gerrard (whose sweet timbre sounded an awful lot like Bill Withers's), and sister Yvonne Staples.
And the band? It's impossible to overstate just how perfectly guitarist Rick Holmstrom, bassist Jeff Turmes, and drummer Stephen Hodges kept Staples aloft with their crisp accompaniment that put her front and center. (I'm sure I'm not the only one who wishes every aging soul singer could be backed up by these guys - are you listening, Irma Thomas?) Mercifully, there wasn't a keyboard or synthesizer in sight.
Staples often sounded like she does on "We'll Never Turn Back," whose lean, bluesy production came courtesy of guitarist Ry Cooder, without an ounce of flab on any of the songs. Staples rarely just sang - she testified and emoted like a silver-tongued Southern preacher rallies the masses.
She had a lot on her mind, too. On "Down in Mississippi," a searing indictment of segregation during the civil rights era, she recalled how her grandmother warned her not to drink from the wrong water fountain. She grew up in Mississippi, she said, but it's also "a good place to be away from."
With just Holmstrom backing her on guitar, Staples tore into a bare-bones cover of the Consolers' "Waiting for my Child to Come Home." She turned the old gospel hymn into a mother's plea for her child to come home from war. At times, she kept the microphone at her side; she didn't even need it.
James Reed can be reached at jreed@globe.com. 