Mavis Staples & Levon Helm – “You Got To Move”

Greg McKean

Mavis Staples & Levon Helm – “You Got To Move”

Greg McKean

If you’ve ever seen The Last Waltz, then you already know that the Band’s Levon Helm and The Staple Singers’ Mavis Staples always sounded great together. The 71-year-old Levon Helm died of throat cancer in 2012. A year before his passing, Helm got together with Mavis Staples to record one final session in his Woodstock studio. Later this spring, Anti- will release that session as an album. It’s called Carry Me Home.

Carry Me Home features Levon’s daughter Amy Helm on backup vocals, and it features Helm and Staples taking on songs made famous by people like Bob Dylan and Nina Simone. The first single is an upbeat, engaged take on “You Got To Move,” a blues traditional famously recorded by people like Mississippi Fred McDowell and the Rolling Stones. Below, listen to that song, check out the Carry Me Home tracklist, and read what Mavis Staples had to say about her final experience recording with Levon Helm.

In a press release, Mavis Staples says:

It never crossed my mind that it might be the last time we’d see each other. He was so full of life and so happy that week. He was the same old Levon I’d always known, just a beautiful spirit inside and out…

We hugged and hugged and hugged. I just held on to him. I didn’t know it’d be the last time, but in my heart and in my mind, Levon will always be with me because I take him everywhere I go. Yes, indeed. I can see him right now. And some sweet day, we’ll be together again.

TRACKLIST:
01 “This Is My Country”
02 “Trouble In My Mind”
03 “Farther Along”
04 “Hand Writing On The Wall”
05 “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free”
06 “Move Along Train”
07 “This May Be The Last Time”
08 “When I Go Away”
09 “Wide River To Cross”
10 “You Got To Move”
11 “You Got To Serve Somebody”
12 “The Weight”

Carry Me Home is out 5/20 on Anti-. Mavis Staples will perform with Amy Helm that night at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music, and they’ll also perform together at the Dirt Farmer Festival 5/21.

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