There is no more recognisable sound in gospel music than the aching harmonies of the Staples Singers, underpinned by the husky murmur and throbbing electric guitar of Roebuck Staples, who has died aged 85. Leading his family group for more than 40 years, he was a pivotal figure in gospel in the 1960s and 70s, when the music gave a vivid voice to both the anger and the aspirations of the African-American community.
Staples grew up near Winona, Mississippi, and as a boy was impressed by local blues guitarists such as Charlie Patton, who lived on a neighbouring plantation. "That sold me on guitar," he recalled. "My greatest ambition was then to play and record." It was a dream that he had to defer for some years while he and his wife Oceola brought up their children in Chicago, where they moved in 1935.
He worked for the Armour tinned-meat company as a packer and killer and in his spare time sang with a gospel quartet, the Trumpet Jubilees. By his own account he "didn't touch a guitar for at least 12 years".
The family group of Staples and his four teenage children, Cleotha, Purvis, Yvonne and Mavis, first appeared in public soon after the second world war, singing at neighbourhood churches. In the early 50s they began to be heard on records, first for Leonard Allen's United label, then for the larger Vee-Jay, where they made such unforgettable records as Don't Drive Me Away, This May Be The Last Time - later adapted by the Rolling Stones - and Uncloudy Day. The combination of Staples' tremolo-laden guitar and the wild beauty of Mavis's voice- what the jazz writer Stanley Crouch called "their joy and thunder" - was like nothing previously heard in gospel music, and Uncloudy Day sold, as Staples remarked, "like rock 'n' roll".
In the early 60s the Staples Singers, now with Riverside records, looked for an audience beyond the ghetto, recording coffeehouse favourites such as Cotton Fields, Bob Dylan's Blowin' In The Wind and Woody Guthrie's This Land Is Your Land. Such choices were mildly controversial at the time, but Staples was quick to defend them. "I think they're good material. I think it's time for the whole nation to start listening to something that means something, and think that this land belongs to everybody. If they would think like that we'd have a better United States."
A further move in the late 60s to the soul label Stax found the family extending their range still further with aspirational soul material such as Respect Yourself, which won them a gold disc; the hypnotic chant I'll Take You There; and the million-selling If You're Ready (Come Go With Me). Staples also recorded an instrumental blues album, Jammed Together, with fellow guitarists Albert King and Steve Cropper. There were those who regarded these progressive accommodations to the secular music market as betrayals of the traditions the family were supposed to represent. To such accusations Staples succinctly replied, "Ain't nobody want to go to heaven more than me, but we got to live down here too."
The Staples Singers worked less after Mavis left to pursue a solo career, but in the 90s "Pops" Staples, as he now billed himself, enjoyed a spell of international success away from the family setting, appearing at blues festivals - though steadfastly refusing to sing the blues - and recording the well-received albums Peace to the Neighborhood and Father Father in collaboration with admirers such as Ry Cooder and Bonnie Raitt.
His wife died in 1987 and he is survived by his children.
Roebuck 'Pops' Staples, gospel musician, born December 28 1914; died December 19 2000.