Singing legend Mavis Staples brings history and hilarity to the Kessler

Mavis Staples possesses an extraordinary voice - guttural, soul-soaked and imbued with an unbreakable spirit. The 75-year-old legend is not just vital to music's history, but to the history of our country. Along with her father and siblings in the Staple Singers, she sang spiritually- and politically-charged tunes that became clarion calls for the 1960s Civil Rights movement (and they still hold up brilliantly today).

So we weren't surprised that on the 50th anniversary weekend of the Selma-to-Montgomery march, Staples received a hero's welcome when she arrived in Dallas Sunday to play a concert at Oak Cliff's Kessler Theater. The capacity crowd went absolutely wild for her, but even before the show, she was visited by a couple of Dallas dignitaries -- Mayor Mike Rawlings and state Sen. Royce West.

"I felt like I was ... Cleopatra," Staples told the audience a few songs into her performance. "The mayor of Dallas came to see me. Nobody can mess with me in Dallas, now!"

Staples went on to wonder aloud if Sen. West is related to Kanye West, which brought riotous laughter and only encouraged her to riff more: "If they are related, he might come up here and say, 'Gimme that microphone!' "

For all the cackles and cries of appreciation Staples received between songs, there was even greater enthusiasm for the 11 tunes she tackled with her five-piece band (a guitarist, a bassist, a drummer, and two backing vocalists.) Although she claimed her voice wasn't in top form ("I ain't all here, but I feel good"), she nailed every written note and then some.

"If You're Ready (Come Go With Me)" kicked off the set and was followed by Staples' bare-bones take on Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth." By the time she got to "Slippery People," her light cough had subsided and she was feeling the spirit, ad-libbing a series of "dep dep deps" and "na na nas" at the end of the song.

Staples danced with vigor and traded verses with her backup singers on "Respect Yourself." When her guitarist threatened to launch another tune too soon, she gave him some good-natured grief: "He don't give me a chance to catch my breath! Give me time to take a sip of water!"

But she didn't need much of a rest before she was once again firing on all cylinders, during the infectious soul banger "Can You Get to That" from her acclaimed 2013 albumOne True Vine. When Staples reaches for a big note, she shakes her entire body to get there. It's quite a sight. She can do subtle, too, as she proved when she sat down to croon "Holy Ghost."

Truly, the first seven songs would have been enough to send any crowd home smiling, but the show had yet to reach its joyous climax.

Staples reminded us of the historic civil rights anniversary with a thrilling, inspiring performance of the Staple Singers anthem, "Freedom Highway."

"My father, Pops Staples, wrote that song for the big march from Selma to Montgomery," she said after a standing ovation. "I was there, and I'm still here. I'm a witness, and I'm still fighting."

That hard-lived determination lingered as she pushed out the lyrics to the next song, a Little Milton cover: "We may not have a cent to pay the rent/but we're gonna make it."

After an extended guitar solo that gave Staples and her singers a break, she returned to the stage to wrap up the show with two of her iconic family band's classics. "Let's Do It Again" gave the crowd a little something sexy among the spiritual themes, but the apex of crowd participation came with the epic, closing rendition of "I'll Take You There."

Judging from the applause, I doubt there's a single soul from that audience who wouldn't go there with Staples again and again.