Searching

Staples Jr. Singers - a family gospel trio consisting of siblings Edward Brown, R.C. Brown and Annie Brown Caldwell - announce their first new album in nearly 50 years.

Following Luaka Bop's ‘powerful’ (The Guardian) reissue of the family's 1975 debut, "When Do We Get Paid" - a remarkable set of ‘plaintive, rural blues, stomping shuffle-beat soul and ecstatic, electrified chants’ (Aquarium Drunkard) - the Staples Jr. Singers "Searching" live over two nights in October 2023 at a small church in West Point, Mississippi called The Message Centre.

The three siblings-Edward, R.C., and Annie-and their rhythm section sat in a semicircle, some even on pews, playing their music in a room as it was meant to be played. There, across the street from Annie's house, they played songs they had written almost fifty years before - although they now carried a different message. As on their first album, the three original members of Jr. Singers took turns singing lead vocals. The album was produced by Ahmed Gallab, who appears as the artist Sinkane, and arranged by Albert Di Fiore.