Your Good Fortune

Legendary singer Mavis Staples returns with a new four-track EP, Your Good Fortune, through ANTI- Records. After releasing a pair of records produced by Jeff Tweedy, this new effort sees the gospel and soul icon working with “cross-genre soul explorer” Son Little.

Half of the album is made of completely new compositions by Little: the title track and “Fight”. Both tracks match the producer’s elec­tronic approach to classic R&B sounds with Staples’ unfailingly powerful vocals. “Fight” in particular kicks about with a sashaying funk rhythm while Staples delivers speedy lines like, “Talkin’ ’bout Jesus but you treat people dead wrong/ Lookin’ for answers but you singing the same song” with a fierceness that can only come from 75 years of living.

The back end of the EP features “See That My Grave is Kept Clean” and “Wish I Had Answered”, two fresh reworkings of tracks from The Staple Singers’ catalog. The former is a Blind Lemon Jefferson song originally recorded by the Staples as “Dying Man’s Plea”. Here, Staples’ voice digs deep through swampy guitars to keep trudging on. “Wish I Had Answered” was written by Pops “Roebuck” Staples himself, and feels like a vintage Mavis gospel number put through Little’s modernist filter.

Review
Only two months after the release of Don’t Lose This, an album based on the final recordings of her father Pops, Mavis Staples issued Your Good Fortune, an EP made with fellow Anti- label artist Son Little. It came out around the same time as Mavis!, a documentary and celebration of Staples’ 60 years as one of the most enriching and relevant voices in music. Producer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist Little – his sound rustic and heartfelt, rooted in classic soul and blues, with added rhythmic heft applied from hip-hop – is as viable an accomplice for Staples as Jeff Tweedy. There’s a little more dust and grit in these four songs, split between originals and updates, than there is in the Tweedy sessions. There are no composer credits on the physical release, but Staples acknowledged that Little wrote the first two songs. The title cut is high-quality Southern gospel, where Staples questions her worth in front of an echoing trio of background vocalists (including Megan Livingston, Little’s sister). “Fight” is a tightly tumbling protest song with bite: “Freedom and justice, well, they ain’t yo’ plaything/Prop up your puppets and you kill the real kings.” Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “See That My Grave Is Kept Clean,” covered by the Pops-fronted Staples on 1962’s Hammer and Nails (as “Dying Man’s Plea”), has appropriately solemn backing, while a fresh version of Pops’ own “Wish I Had Answered” (the original of which appeared on 1963’s This Land), concludes the short set in rollicking, feverish fashion. Hopefully this is merely a teaser for a full-length collaboration. Staples and Little are a fine creative match. A Kellman – Allmusic.com