Meet Mavis Staples

With multiple #1 hits in the United States, a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award, a marriage proposal from Bob Dylan, concerts opening for Martin Luther King Jr’s speeches and rallies (and occasionally, vice versa), Rolling Stone’s designation as the 56th greatest singer of all time and more than 60 years as a successful performer under her belt, Mavis Staples needs no additional résumé boosts.

Then again, she was never in it for the bragging rights.

Staples’ performance at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater to open the Lotus World Music & Arts Festival today comes in the midst of a recent recording and touring surge that began in the middle of last year with the release of her latest solo album, “You Are Not Alone.”

Now 72, Staples is experiencing a career rebirth at an age when most great American artists see their new work celebrated and critiqued far less than they once did.

For most of her life, people have known Mavis Staples as the lead singer of the iconic gospel and soul group The Staple Singers, comprised of Mavis; her sisters, Yvonne, Cleotha and Pervis; and their father, Roebuck “Pops” Staples.

Hailing from the south side of Chicago, the Singers started out performing in local churches in 1948 and received their first professional contract in 1952, before Mavis was a teenager.

Between roughly 30 albums and legendary hits such as “I’ll Take You There,” “Respect Yourself” and “Let’s Do it Again,” they became world famous and repeatedly conquered charts, especially in the 1970s.

With her self-titled solo debut in 1969, Staples embarked on a separate, independent musical journey she has kept alive to this day. Combining her work as a solo artist and with her band, Staples has spanned countless genres in her life, including gospel, soul, R&B, pop, folk, rock, blues and funk.

In 2005, The Staple Singers were recognized for their prolific career with the prestigious Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award — yet no one in the Staples family had ever won a Grammy. That changed last year with “You Are Not Alone,” the reigning Best Americana Album produced by Jeff Tweedy, who happened to be nominated in the same category the year before with his band, Wilco.

“It’s been a long time coming,” Staples said tearfully while accepting the award as she acknowledged her father, who passed away in 2000. “It’s because of you, Pops, that I’m standing here today. And I tell you — you laid the foundation, and I am still working on the building.”

The album came about when Tweedy and his management approached Staples about producing her next effort. While she had never heard of him, she was shocked and flattered with his knowledge of her career and welcomed his assistance. “You Are Not Alone” includes a stirring and deeply empathetic title track written just for her by Tweedy, three reinventions of Staple Singers originals and an energized cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Wrote a Song for Everyone.”

In the wake of the album’s release, Staples performed cuts from it all over late-night television, including “The Late Show with David Letterman,” “Later ... with Jools Holland,” “Conan” and, perhaps most fortunately, “The Colbert Report.”

On the latter, she and Tweedy appeared for an interview with Stephen Colbert and to perform the album’s title track. Immediately after the interview, in a rare candid moment for the show, Colbert dropped character and told viewers, “I heard this earlier today. It’s incredible. It’s one of the more beautiful songs I’ve ever heard.”

Now that Tweedy’s and Colbert’s vast, predominantly 1980s and 1990s-born fanbases are fully aware of who Mavis Staples is, audiences at her concerts have become young and plentiful once again.

On Oct. 1, 2010, Staples performed at Colbert’s and Jon Stewart’s “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear” in Washington, D.C., in the company of many other distinguished performers, including The Roots, John Legend, Yusef Islam and Ozzy Osbourne.

Staples and Tweedy performed a stripped-down take of “You Are Not Alone” to an estimated combined audience of nearly three million people: 250,000 in attendance, two million Comedy Central viewers and 500,000 live streams online.

Then, for the rally’s finale, with all of her fellow performers on stage backing her up vocally, she led the politically agitated crowd in a spirited sing-along rendition of “I’ll Take You There.”

The new queen of Americana will find herself representing her own country at Bloomington’s annual world music festival today. Attendees should prepare for the intimately engaging and communal concert experience that it certainly has the potential to be.

After all, the last time Staples was performing to so many twenty-somethings, it was around the time she helped King teach the people of the world to accept one another.

Tonight, in front of what will likely be a widely diverse (both ethnically and in age) audience, she can witness firsthand the colorful tree that became of a seed she and her family helped plant during the civil rights movement. And she’s not even done.

“I’m gonna be around a while,” she announced while wrapping up her Grammy acceptance speech. “Y’all haven’t seen the last of me.”

If history is any indication, you can take her word for it.