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(Anti-)On poignant yet defiant recordings made in 2011 shortly before Helm’s death, Staples’ commanding vocals give enormous vibrancy to blues, folk and soul standardsIn the early noughties, Levon Helm began hosting live shows he called Midnight Rambles in a studio at his home in Woodstock, NY. It was a rare bright moment in the story of what happened to the members of the Band who weren’t Robbie Robertson in the years following the quintet’s split, a grim saga involving bitter enmity, addiction, suicide, bankruptcy and jail. The Midnight Rambles shows reinvigorated the drummer and vocalist’s career, led to two Grammy-winning solo albums and attracted a vast array of guests: Dr John, Drive-By Truckers, Elvis Costello, Donald Fagen, My Morning Jacket, Norah Jones, Kris Kristofferson.But perhaps no performer was quite as appropriate to the event as Mavis Staples, who played a Midnight Ramble with Helm and his band in 2011. Helm had prosaic reasons for starting the shows – after suffering with throat cancer which left him unable to sing for five years, he had medical bills to pay – but his stated aim was to recreate the atmosphere of the travelling tent shows he’d seen as a child in Arkansas. The “midnight ramble”, he explained, was a second, adults-only performance, “where the songs would get a little bit juicier, the jokes would get funnier and the prettiest dancer would really get down and shake it”. Continue reading...