Tim Yang

“In these settings, his guitar was forbidden, even though in his own head the blues and gospel were like concurrent, even complementary streams. His father looked at the blues with contempt: The “devil’s music,” he called it. Many of the churchgoing adults “looked down on it, they didn’t want you to touch it,” Roebuck recalled. But in his own mind, he saw more similarities than differences between the two styles: “A Christian should sing God’s praises, but there are some things that some people call a sin that I don’t see as such. Singing the blues is telling a story, and it’s telling a true story. You take all those [blues] guys, they’re talking about a woman. They’re talking about experience—that’s all it is.”
― Greg Kot, I'll Take You There: Mavis Staples, the Staple Singers, and the March up Freedom's Highway