Mavis Staples Says Aretha Franklin Disrespected Her By Turning Down The Volume On Staples’ Vocals On A Recording of Their 1987 Duet Of “Oh Happy Day”: She Was Very Insecure!

June 28, 2022 by Monique Nicole in Music with 0 Comments

Mavis Staples Says Aretha Franklin Disrespected Her By Turning Down The Volume On Staples’ Vocals On A Recording of Their 1987 Duet Of “Oh Happy Day”: She Was Very Insecure!

Singer/Actress/ Civil Rights Activist Mavis Staples, 82, is opening up about her complicated friendship with the late Aretha Franklin!

The beloved singer who has an impressive catalog of solo work– in addition to what she recorded alongside her siblings in the group The Staple Singers–is getting candid about the relationship she had with Aretha Franklin.

During a recent interview, Mavis Staples recalls that although she and the “Queen of Soul” went way back and had a long-term friendship, she felt Aretha Franklin was not always kind to her. Staples revealed that Franklin disrespected her when she allegedly decided to turn down the volume of Staples’ vocals on a recording of a live 1987 duet of “Oh Happy Day” they recorded together. Staples says that she was unaware this occurred until the recording was releases. Mavis Staples said she just shrugged it off and let it go.

“I should’ve told her, ‘No, just don’t put the record out,’ but you know me: goody-goody Mavis.”

Mavis Staples

During the interview, Mavis Staples said that Aretha Franklin put her temperament to the test several times during the course of their friendship.

“I put up with her for a long time till I got tired, you know? She was very insecure. I tried my best to be her friend. She would call me and ask me to call her back. When I called her back, the number was changed. So, you know, she was weird like that.”

While Aretha Franklin was loved by many, the legendary singer was known for budding heads and throwing shade at fellow singers in the music industry such as Dionne Warwick, Beyonce, Celine Dion, and Gladys Knight to name a few.

One of her last public feuds before her death was with legendary singer Dionne Warwick. At Whitney Houston’s funeral back in 2012, Dionne referred to Aretha as Houston’s godmother. Apparently that did not sit well with Aretha and it stuck with her for years. To the public’s surprise, five years later during a phone interview, the Queen of Soul let it be known in 2017 that she had not forgotten about Dionne’s comments. Franklin said,

“She blatantly lied on me … fully well knowing what she was doing.”

She even went as far as faxing the Associated Press to tell them that the statement, made at Houston’s funeral five years earlier was “libelous”. When asked if she wanted an apology from Dionne she stated,

“I don’t care about her apology. At this point it isn’t about an apology, it’s about libel….We’ve never been friends and I don’t think that Dionne has ever liked me.”

Dionne Warwick -Around that time, fellow soul legend Gladys Knight weighed in on the feud while on the red carpet for the 2017 Daytime Emmy Awards. Knowing both ladies on a personal level, Knight said,

“It’s just one of those things, you know, everybody got their little knick knacks going on..Dionne’s gonna speak her mind, and she’s gonna tell the truth. Ree is gonna be sensitive and cause a whole lot of riff raff.”