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”.

The trio was an immediate hit with the church audiences.  They recorded several singles for Nashboro Records such as “I Looked Down the Line (And I
Wondered)” and “Too Late.”  The trio toured extensively, even overseas spots such as the Philippines.  They appeared on bills with the Staple Singers, the Soul Stirrers, and Aretha Franklin among others.  Mavis Staples remembers, “Canzetta was something.  I remember at one place in Shreveport the stage was real high.  Back then, gospel singers liked to go out into the aisles and work the crowd up.  Well, that stage was so high that none of the guys tried to jump down there that night; but Canzetta sure ‘nuff jumped down there and got them worked up.”

When she came of age, Candi left the group.  “We were taken advantage of and I left because of the misuse,” she says.  Instead of pursuing a career, Candi pursued marriage and motherhood.  However, after seven years of matrimony, she had grown tired of her husband’s jealousy and physical abuse.  So when her minister made a pass at her, she just snapped.  “I said forget you, forget church, and forget everybody.  I’m through with God.  Bye!  And I said, ‘I’m gonna sing the blues,’ just like that.”  The big break soon followed.  Her brother had dared her to sing on amateur night at the 27/28 Club in Birmingham.  She went up and sang “Do Right Woman” and won a booking to open for Clarence Carter, her future husband.  He liked her and asked her to open for him on the road.

After hooking up with Clarence, Candi enjoyed smash Top 10 R&B hits such as “I’d Rather Be An Old Man’s Sweetheart (Than To Be A Young Man’s Fool)”, “Sweet Feeling,” “Stand By Your Man,” “He Called Me Baby,” “Mr. & Mrs. Untrue,” “Too Hurt To Cry” and “In The Ghetto” which won a Grammy nomination and a personal letter of praise from Elvis Presley.  After 1976, Candi became a princess in the disco field with hits like “Young Hearts Run Free,” “Victim,” “Nights On Broadway” and “When You Wake Up Tomorrow.” 

After a series of personal traumas, Staton became a born-again Christian in 1982.  Her initial gospel album “Make Me An Instrument” peaked at #7 on the Billboard gospel charts and garnered her third Grammy Award nomination.  In the intervening years, she recorded a dozen other gospel albums and hosted the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) weekly series “Say Yes” (originally “New Direction”) from 1986 to 2004.

In 1991 Candi became the British dance rage as a bootleg of a song she recorded in 1986 entitled “You Got The Love” was remixed and became a Top Ten British hit and sold two million copies.  The song was reissued in both 1997 and 2006 and charted in the British Top Ten again each time. After witnessing so many divorces in the church, Staton decided to go into the studio and record a relationship music cd entitled “His Hands” (Astralwerks/Honest Jons) that was released in spring 2006. “In the church we sometimes focus so much on the spiritual things that we neglect the natural things,” Staton says. “That’s not balance. While we’re eon earth, we have to take care of our spouses and our kids and be there for them. We can’t be in worship all day or we won’t be doing what God has called us to do, so that project talks about issues that everyone goes through – including Christians. The songs point to things that you should see as signs of a problem in your relationships. I know some in the church still won’t understand it, but I have Biblical scriptures to back me up and if they want to argue with scriptures, that’s their choice.”   The gospel according to Candi Staton and the Bible.