pops-staples

With his idiosyncratic style and spare Tele-driven setup, the inventive guitarist twists roots music on his new groove-centric album, Get It!

Rick Holmstrom says he spends ā€œa lot of time not listening to guitar. I like trying to imagine the guitar taking the place of saxophone, Ahmad Jamalā€™s piano, or Mose Allisonā€™s piano. Like Billie Holiday, who does those weird little micro bends that the great singers doā€”how can you get a feeling like that on the guitar?ā€

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Pops Staples at the Chicago Blues Fest on June 8, 1986.
Photo by Kirk West / Archive Photos / Getty Images

The gospel guitarist who took his tremolo-shaken country blues from Sunday mass to the masses.

Whenever you hear country blues-inflected guitar played through an amp with tremolo, youā€™re hearing a sound descended from singer/composer/guitarist Pops Staples. Best known as the leader of a family gospel group, the Staple Singers, his guitar style influenced and inspired John Fogerty, Bonnie Raitt, Ry Cooder, and countless others. The dark mystery of his instrumentā€™s wavy sound has become part of the fabric of American music.

Roebuck Staples, known as ā€œPops,ā€ was born to Warren and Florence Staples on December 28, 1914, on a cotton plantation near Winona, Mississippi. Roebuck and his older brother Sears were named after the Chicago mail-order company that supplied millions of rural Americans with everything from washing machines to musical instruments.

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