Young heart still runs free
The ageless soul sister talks new music and her brushes with Elvis and Sam Cooke
Shortly after Candi Staton, 78, left her home in Hanceville, Alabama, to tour as a teenage gospel star she met a life-long friend, the late, great Queen of Soul, Aretha Franklin.
“She would get up every morning and sing Amazing Grace and she played a really good piano,” Candi recalls. “Going through the southern states was dangerous. The KKK was out. We had safe houses we’d be trying to get to, because there was no hotels we could stay in.
“All of us from that era have a growl, a moan in our voice.
“We couldn’t talk about it but we let it out when we sung.”
Candi’s been making soul music history across six decades. Her classic song of emancipation, Young Hearts Run Free and rave-era classic You Got The Love are ageless anthems, while her 60s and 70s recordings with the late Rick Hall are as deep and pure as soul music gets.
Six-times wed Candi won the praises of both Queen Aretha and rock’n’roll King Elvis Presley.
“Elvis wrote me a note when I covered In The Ghetto,” she says, “and he told me I did a fantastic job on that song. I guess I’d be retired by now if I only still had that note!”
On her new album, appropriately titled Unstoppable, Candi continues the late career revival inaugurated on 2006’s His Hands.
Rousing covers, including Patti Smith’s People Have The Power and defiant originals such as Confidence contain the spirit that has powered her career. “I was doing the MeToo movement in the 70s. It just wasn’t publicised. I had to walk that strong line as a woman and back in those days it wasn’t popular. So I’m used to MeToo. It just happens to be getting popular now.”
Candi’s Alabama childhood was filled with fear.
“I was always afraid. A black man near us was castrated. I was worried for my brothers.
“In our hometown they had a sign saying, ‘Read this and run, n ***** . And if you can’t read – run anyway,” she recalls.
Candi was only 14 when the late legendary Sam Cooke arranged a record deal for her.
“He was the most beautifullooking man I’d ever seen. I had the biggest crush. Like, oh my God. He was just gorgeous. But I was so young, he looked at me as a kid. Which I was.”
The late great singer Tyrone Davis was more like a brother and he ensured she got more from Elvis than a complimentary note.
“I bought a pinkish Cadillac with white leather like a gangster car, but Tyrone said ‘This is not you. That’s a pimp car – you need to get rid of that thing’.
“Then the Cadillac company called me. Elvis had just ordered a limousine but it didn’t meet his specifications, so they gave me a great deal on it. When I showed it to Tyrone, he said: ‘Now, that’s what I’m talking about. That’s you’.”