Mavis Staples & Levon Helm - Carry Me Home - 2 LP White Color Vinyl Record 45rpm

Carry Me Home strays from both Staples and Helm's typical set lists of the time, comprising a number of old standards, covers, and originals that the two spontaneously worked up that weekend. Staples sings lead vocals throughout, covering the Impressions' "This Is My Country," which the Staple Singers had attempted to record decades earlier; Pops Staples' "Move Along Train," which Helm had covered two years earlier, on 2009's Electric Dirt; the gospel standard "Farther Along"; Nina Simone's "I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free," a song Staples had never sung before; and, of course, "The Weight," a song Staples and Helm immortalized in Martin Scorsese's The Last Waltz — and during which Helm, 35 years after the film and barely singing at that point in his life, contributes a verse.

Thinking back on the performance now, Amy Helm realizes that it marked not only the last time her father ever performed with Staples, but really one of the last-ever documents of her father taking the stage while he was still feeling healthy and vital.

"He was really feeling good and strong and I remember he started to get sick again by the end of August," says Helm, who, like Staples, carries on her family's musical legacy in her solo career. "That summer, and this gig, was a really special, healthy, beautiful time, with lots of laughter. It's perfect for (one of his) last musical experiences like that to have been with her."