E9580 - Pops Staples: Delta Guitar, Gospel Faith and a Number One Hit at 60

Roebuck Pops Staples scored a Billboard number one pop hit the day before he turned 61, and this episode traces the life that made such a late peak possible. Born in December 1914 near Winona, Mississippi, the youngest of 14 children, he grew up on a cotton plantation near Drew with an eighth-grade education, absorbing the guitar language of Delta neighbors like Charley Patton while choosing the gospel path over the juke joint. After marrying Oceola in 1935 he moved to Chicago, worked the stockyards, construction sites and a steel mill, sang with the Trumpet Jubilees, and in 1948 formed the Staple Singers with...