Down across the railroad tracks, on a narrow road called Church Street in West Point, Mississippi, there’s a windowless brick building that’s been converted into a house of worship called The Message Center. One chilly January morning, the original members of a little-known gospel group from Aberdeen, Mississippi, called the Staples Jr. Singers gathered there to play some of their early songs for the first time in nearly 50 years.
Who are the Staples Jr. Singers, and why do they share a name with that other gospel group you might have heard of, the ones who famously crossed over? When the musical family behind the Jr. Singers, the Browns, were starting out in the 1970s, excited audiences would flock to them after shows, telling them, “Y’all sound like the Staple Singers, y’all should call yourselves the little Staple Jr. Singers!” And so they did.
Many of these songs, which they wrote when they were just teenagers, first appeared on their only full-length release in 1975, When Do We Get Paid (Luaka Bop, 2022), but none have been revisited—until now.
