For most of their first two decades as a family singing group, beginning in 1948, The Staple Singers were dedicated to gospel music, turning out a series of church-rooted singles and LPs for several labels, including Vee-Jay, Checker and Epic. By the mid ‘60s, they’d begun adding civil rights anthems to their repertoire and even covered Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth,” In 1968, as the black empowerment movement became more widespread, the group— whose membership included the remarkable guitarist Roebuck “Pops” Staples and singer Mavis Staples, one of Pops’ children—signed with Stax Records in Memphis. The Staple Singers moved deeper into a more secular soul sound and, in the ‘70s, found great success with rousing, positive-message tunes like “I’ll Take You There” and “Respect Yourself” (the former reached No. 1 on the pop charts as well). Come Go With Me: The Stax Collection culls, on 180-gram vinyl (it was released previously in digital formats), all of the group’s LPs cut for Stax between 1968-74, with a seventh album boasting live performances from the 1972 Wattstax Festival, alongside a handful of non-album singles and other odds and ends. Of the original albums, Bealtitude: Respect Yourself—the 1972 release by the then-quartet—remains the most impressive, seamlessly mixing religious material like “Beatitudes” (words drawn from the Bible) with the two previously noted chart hits and other secular material. The other albums are more hit and miss, each containing a few keepers (their take on “The Weight” on Soul Folk in Action, the title track from We’ll Get Over) and a good amount of pedestrian fare. The performances, particularly from Mavis and Pops, are never less than enlivened, fitting snugly into the Stax mindset, even when the material left something to be desired.