On a rainy April day in Chicago, Mavis Staples sat in the restaurant of the towering downtown Chicago building where she’s lived for the past four years. For two hours, she talked about the civil rights movement and faith. She’d heard rumors he would soon retire, finally wrapping his fabled Never Ending Tour. The Staple Singers became a gospel fulcrum of the civil rights movement and, later, a force for bending genres — mixing funk, rock and soul inside their spiritual mission, an all-American alchemy. The band’s mightiest singer and sole survivor since the death of her sister Yvonne in 2018 and brother, Pervis, in 2021, Mavis remained in high demand, a historical treasure commanding a thunderous contralto.

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Persons: Mavis Staples, she’s, Bob Dylan, he’d, They’ve, She’d, Staples, Bobby, ” Staples, “, ‘ Don’t, ’ ” Staples, Roebuck Staples, Yvonne, Pervis, Mavis Organizations: Staples, Newport Folk Locations: Chicago