Songfacts®:

• Mavis Staples recorded this Washington Phillips gospel standard for her 2013 album One True Vine. It was originally recorded by The Staple Singers for their 1964 This little Light album. Mavis recalled to Mojo magazine: "I heard that song before The Staple Singers. I used to go to church with my grandmother down in Mississippi and that's when I first heard it. When I come home pops was singing with an all-male group. They were jubilee singers and they were singing it fast. I listen to that song now and think about my mother and my father and you know I just lost my sister Cleotha and I think about them. What are they doing? Maybe momma's making sweet potato pie. You know, Pops would visit disc jockeys and take a sweet potato pie along with our record. One of the disc jockeys he said on the radio, 'I tell ya one thing, these Staple Singers, they don't need no payola. They got pie-ola."