Candi Staton

Before disco caught on and Candi Staton became known for the #1 dance smash “Young Hearts Run Free,” she had begun her career in the stellar Jewel Gospel Trio in the 1950’s.  After her big run as a secular star in the 1970’s, she returned to her gospel roots in 1982.  Since then, she has developed a reputation as a Charismatic praise and worship leader, a sensitive psalmist and the person who first infused gospel with funk through her “gospco” songs such as “Dance” and “Sing A Song” which merged disco rhythms with gospel lyrics.  However, Candi is equally known for her sweet ballads such as “Sin Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and “Mama” as she is for her more high-energy material.  Whatever she does is sweet and that’s why she’s called the Sweetheart of Soul.

Candi is currently in the studio working on her first gospel cd since 2002’s “Proverbs 31 Woman” which featured the smash radio singles “Hallelujah Anyway” and the bluesy “When There’s Nothing Left but God.” In the summer of 2006, Shanachie Records released all of Candi’s best-known gospel hits on a specially priced thirty-song 2-CD set that is tentatively entitled, “The Best: Candi Staton’s Gospel Hits.” The project features all of Candi’s classics such as “Mama” and “The First Face I Want to See.” It includes four brand new songs and previously unreleased material such as her rendition of Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On?” and a club remix of “Hallelujah Anyway.”

Born Canzetta Maria Staton in Hanceville, Alabama, Candi was a farming family.  When they weren’t harvesting crops or picking cotton, they were in church.  As a child, Staton sang in the choir.  “The crowds would get very emotional,” she recalls.  “At the time I didn’t really know why they were crying so much…Once I remember, the audience got so emotional, throwing their pocket books at my feet and so on, that I got really scared and ran off to my mother.”  Staton’s farther was a hard drinker and a little prodigious with his money.  Mrs. Staton took the kids and moved to Cleveland where her oldest son lived.  His wife took them to her church, which was pastured by Bishop Jewel and asked if the Staton kids could sing a song.  They sang every song they had ever heard that night and for the first time, a band backed them.  Impressed by their obvious talent, Jewel asked Candi (then ten years old) and her older sister, Maggie, to sing with her group.  She added Naomi Harrison to the line-up and they became the “Jewel Gospel Trio”.