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Interview
by SaschaS
8-8-2004
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| Candi Staton: soul legend's early work |
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Soul stirring Candi
Candi Staton: an educational chat with a veteran soulster
Life hardly ever makes sense and at times it is as puzzling as the words missed at the crucial moment. For the difference from today’s ‘Pop Stars’, let us tell you a story about Candi Staton: this soul/gospel veteran was born Canzetta Maria Staton in the small Alabama town of Henceville whilst the WWII was ravaging the globe.
By the age of ten - having grown up picking cotton in the fields and singing in a gospel choir - her mother moved her to Cleveland to escape her abusive, alcoholic husband but Candi was sent to a boarding school in Nashville. She swapped it for on-road tutoring after joining the Jewel Gospel Trio that toured with Mahalia Jackson, The Staple Singers, The Soul Stirrers and young Aretha Franklin. At the age of 17 she ran off to Los Angeles with the Pilgrim Travelers’ singer Lou Rawls and was set to wed until his mother sent her back to finish schooling.
The young Miss decided that she didn’t need any more education and returned to touring but got pregnant and had to get married. Her husband, a son of a local Pentecostal minister, was a jealous and abusive man and Candi had to abandon her career for seven years. She dedicated herself to indoor life of being a wife and a mom to three more children.
One night her brother took her out and persuaded a club owner to let her sing: she belted out Ms Franklin’s ‘Do Right Woman, Do Right Man’, and was hired to sing every week. To be able to do her weekend shows she worked in a nursing home during the week, until one night she sang with FAME recording artist Clarence Carter, then a big star in the South. He offered her to tour with his band but she had to refuse on account of her husband.
Six months later, C. Carter having told her to get in touch if her situation ever changed, she left her husband and started gigging with the band. The relationship grew into a romantic one but before that, Rick Hall, owner of FAME - stands for Florence Alabama Music Enterprises - Recording Studios, who was looking for female blues singers, got her into his famed Muscle Shoals studio. [Rick Hall had already worked with Aretha, Etta James and was responsible for Wilson Pickett’s classic ‘Hey Jude’].
Candi cut four songs on the first night but it would take six months of shopping the tracks around before Capital Records decided to sign her. And then, for the next six years she recorded at FAME, scoring 12 consecutive R&B hits as well as several pop ones. After two Capital albums she moved to United Artists and then, for the fourth album, to Warner Bros, released in 1974, that was her last collaboration with Hall.
Stanton’s version of ‘In The Ghetto’ even prompted the late legend Elvis Presley to send her a letter expressing his admiration. Some thirty years later 26 of these FAME recordings are collected on ‘Candi Staton’; her best-known hit is the 1976 million-seller ‘Young Hearts Run Free’ and the multi-platinum single ‘You Got the Love’ that was featured in the finale episode of ‘Sex and the City’. And, yeah, the version of ‘Ghetto’ is enclosed here. So, we got with Ms Staton [pronounced Stay-ton] and had a chat that naturally went way beyond the current pop-standard.
The music made in those days is still evergreen and not so-easy-to-date as the contemporary one; have you got any idea why?
“It is the trends and as they change so often… When rap music came in, it pretty much wiped out everything else, it shook the music industry. I can only really speak for America, but over here everything is aimed at the group that would spend the most money and that’s young people. They don’t have mortgages, job-worries, are not that concerned with the state of the country’s economy but want to have fun.”
“Also, under the pressure - music industry caters for rap fans - even the parents of younger children have to buy CDs for their children. There is a talk of music industry dying out within 6 or 7 years and I believe it will because they are not selling music. We were doing music but nobody is doing it… And, everything is simplified, formulated and studio-engineered…”
Music of your era used to speak to a listener’s heart and soul…
“Yes, it did… I like that, thank you. There isn’t much of it anymore and it is enough to look at Beyoncé, she is not a singer, she is a sex-symbol. She’s gotta good voice but you see more than you hear, she is so much about her body her voice is pushed behind… She’s got everything but the pole,” she laughs loudly. “If she had a pole, she’d be a stripper.”
Sweet feelings
The difference is that female singer were artistically guided in those days but weren’t fashion and image dictated, while now, it is everything else to the creative detriment.
“And, you know what,” Ms Stanton suddenly says, “we had dancers but the principal singers didn’t have to do it. Nobody did it but James Brown… Now they all are doing it but as it is a physical exercise that prevents you breeding properly, they have to mime. That‘s not a singer but a performer and there is a big difference there.”
“The worst thing is that everything sounds the same… If there is one successful sound than everybody would copy it. And, all the albums sounds the same, every song is exact copy of the others and you wonder why did they make this album, they could have fitted that [one idea] on a single? My good friend Prince, who has a brilliant album out, ‘Musicology’, said there was no more music in the world and it is time to bring it back.”
“That’s why I think it is good to have compilations like mine out because people can rediscover, re-enjoy, or hear for the first time some great songs that are all organic. There is no trickery, no studio-fixing, nothing but musicians in the studio and the songs are about something… People so often come to me and tell me how a certain song saved their marriage, or even their lives…”
“What we sang about wasn’t only about sex but our lives and loves… Aside sex, what do you fill in the remaining 90 per cent of your time with?”
Times were a-changing
You started recording at the tail-end of the 1960s; were there any race problems?
“If you sang R’n’B or blues you’d go to what used to be called ‘Chipper-circuit club’. They’d put ‘Mothers’ Day’ shows on ‘Welfare days’ so that mothers could go and enjoy themselves and spend money. Us, the performers, there would obey a dress-code rule, and there wasn’t one on other days, there would be no refreshments for us… Basically we were there to make money for the club owner and they‘d never let you forget that. And there was so much smoke around we used to choke.”
You’ve had a hellish life and that could be the reason that you can sing blues and soul from the deepest reaches of your being…
“Today’s ‘stars’ appear to have it really easy and with ’American Idol’ - it is even easier; you need experience, you need to live through pain, you have to suffer for your art - that’s what we had to go through. Now, you are voted into being a star! There may be quality voices around but they are not backed by experiences that defines the delivery.”
Your version of ‘In The Ghetto’ prompted ‘King’ Elvis to send you a letter expressing his admiration?
“True, Elvis wrote me a note about my performance and it was really a great thrill. It was very complimentary and he praised me for doing a great job and said how much he had really enjoyed it. He also wished me well…”
How good has it been? Any complaints?
“Plenty but there is no use voicing them as you can change nothing about it. Complaining may be good for the soul but it certainly has no influence on anything.”
If you had a choice to duet with anyone, whom would you have sung with?
“I’d probably would like to have worked with BB King, he is one of my favourites. Or, Ray Charles, who recently passed away. I really admired him and he was my favourite singer of all time. I used to listen to him when I was a teenager and it was a dream come true, to share a stage with him when I became an artist myself. I knew he was sick but I had no idea it would be this soon. His soul is in my prayers. I'm still broken hearted and shocked.”
Staton - who had first performed with Charles in 1976 when opening for him at the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas - last saw Charles in person when they both appeared on David Gest's ‘Miracle on 24th Street’ concert at Madison Square Garden in December 2002.
“I'm so thankful that David Gets brought us back together again. David booked us both on that concert and I went up and knocked on Ray's dressing room door and told him who it was. He told me to come in and we had a great time catching up. He asked me to walk him to the stage and I did. He held on to me really tight and wouldn't let go. I'm so thankful I got to see him again before he passed on.”
“My heart is just broken,” she continues. “The world has lost one-of-a-kind singer and a one-of-a-kind man. Nobody can replace Ray Charles. His absence leaves a huge hole in the music business.”
SaschaS
8-8-2004
Candi Station compilation 'Candi Staton' is available now on Honest Jons/EMI
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