There are few living musicians who can lay claim to being the voice of America's conscience, and even fewer who continue to make vital music. As a solo performer and with the family group she is so identified with, the Staple Singers, Mavis has managed to transform herself as she goes, yet never alter. From the delta-gospel sound she helped create in the 1950s, to the engaged protest of the civil rights era, to a series of soul radio anthems in the 1970s, Mavis has carried on, her warm embrace of a voice the only constant.  In 2010, at age 73, she won the first Grammy of her career for “You Are Not Alone.”

Staples is a Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award winner, and a National Heritage Fellowship Award recipient, and was listed as one of Rolling Stone's “100 Greatest Singers of All Time.”