Soul Candi Latest Album

[Channing Arther]

Bornin Hanceville, Alabama, Staton and her sister Maggie were sent to Nashville, Tennessee at around age 11 or 12 for school. While attending Jewell Christian Academy, Staton's vocal abilities were soon noticed by her peers and the school's pastor. Amazed by her voice, the pastor paired Staton and her sister with a third girl, Naomi Harrison, and they formed the Jewell Gospel Trio.[7] As teenagers, the group toured the traditional gospel circuit during the 1950s with the Soul Stirrers, C. L. Franklin and Mahalia Jackson.[8] They recorded several sides for Nashboro, Apollo and Savoy Records between 1953 and 1963.[citation needed]

In 1968, Staton was introduced to Rick Hall by Clarence Carter and launched her solo career as a Southern soul stylist,[8] garnering 16 R&B hits for Rick Hall's FAME Studios and gaining the title of "First Lady of Southern Soul" for her Grammy-nominated R&B renditions of the songs "Stand by Your Man" and "In the Ghetto".[9] Staton appeared on the September 23, 1972, edition (Season 2, Episode 1) of Soul Train.

In 1976, Staton began collaborating with producer David Crawford on disco songs such as "Young Hearts Run Free", which reached No. 1 on the US R&B charts, No. 2 in the UK Singles Chart and went Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100[10] during the summer of 1976. It was remixed and re-released in 1986, reaching the UK Top 50.[10] Follow up song "Destiny" hit the Top 50 in the UK.[10] and her version of "Nights on Broadway" hit the UK Top 10 in 1977;.[10] In 1978, Staton scored another Top 50 hit in the UK with "Honest I Do Love You".[10] In 1979 from her album Chance, Staton released the single "When You Wake Up Tomorrow" (co-written by Patrick Adams and Wayne K. Garfield) and the title song "Chance", a top 20 R&B charted record. Other dance club chart hits included "When You Wake Up Tomorrow" and "Victim". In 1982, Staton again hit the UK chart with a version of Mark James's "Suspicious Minds".[10][11]

In 1982, Staton returned to gospel music. Staton and her then-husband, John Sussewell, founded Beracah Ministries in Atlanta, Georgia, with help from Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker's PTL Ministries.[9] Staton has since recorded twelve gospel albums, two of which received Grammy Award nominations. Staton appears on the United Nations Register of Entertainers, Actors And Others Who Have Performed in Apartheid South Africa.[12]

In 1991, Staton returned to UK popular charts by lending her vocals to The Source's British hit "You Got the Love".[13] Staton signed with Intersound Records in 1995. In 2000, she released her eleventh album, Here's a Blessing. In 2004, the British record label Honest Jon's released a compilation album of her soul work from the late 1960s and early 1970s, the self-titled Candi Staton. Staton followed it up with a secular project in 2006 entitled His Hands, produced by Mark Nevers of Lambchop and with the title track written by Will Oldham. Two of Staton's children, Cassandra Williams-Hightower (background vocals) and Marcus Williams (drums), joined her on the album. A second studio album for Honest Jon's, titled Who's Hurting Now?, appeared in 2009. She and Rick Hall reunited to make a half dozen more tracks for Staton's 2014 southern soul album, Life Happens. The lead Americana radio single, "I Ain't Easy to Love", featured Jason Isbell and John Paul White (formerly of The Civil Wars). The trio performed the track on Late Show with David Letterman. Staton's television show New Direction aired on TBN.

Staton has also made appearances on the Praise the Lord telecast with the late Paul Crouch and his late wife Jan Crouch, as well as regularly performing on Robert Tilton's Success-N-Life show.[11] In August 2018, Staton released her 30th album, Unstoppable, which has been touted as a retro psychedelic R&B project. NPR music journalist, Alison Fensterstock, wrote that it, "Delivers the kind of forthright confidence and soul-girding power that can only be summoned by a grown woman who has learned a thing or two. And Staton has lived many lives. Creatively, the quadruple Grammy nominee and Christian Music Hall of Famer has moved between soul and R&B, gospel, disco and even EDM before returning to her roots as an elder stateswoman."[14]

Staton has been married six times and has five children. She was first married to Pentecostal minister,[15] Joe Williams, from 1960 until 1968. Together they had four children: Marcus Williams, Marcel Williams, Terry Williams and Cassandra Williams-Hightower. In 1970, Staton married singer Clarence Carter and together they had one child, Clarence Carter Jr. They divorced in 1973. Staton was married to Jimmy James, her then manager,[16] from 1974 until 1977. Two years after divorcing James, Staton married John Sussewell, who was a drummer for Ashford & Simpson and also on Dory Previn's sixth album We're Children of Coincidence and Harpo Marx in 1980. They divorced in 1998 after 18 years of marriage.[17] From 2010 until 2012, Staton was married to former baseball player Otis Nixon.[18] She has been married to Henry Hooper since 2017.

I'm not sure if I should explicitly blame NAFTA for this, or just chalk it up to yet another case of outsourcing, but the States' fine musical heritage continues to be sold back to us by the more attuned tastemakers in Japan, Germany, Italy, and England. The Brits, with that sterling exchange rate and unequivocal love of-- as one music journal states it-- "American Negro Music" continue to kill us with our once-exported music. Late last year, the excellent Country Got Soul comp, which compiled homegrown redneck-soul, swamp-sludged funk, and proto-Outlaw tracks, was released in England, and labels like Kent and Ace (not to mention Soul Jazz) regularly dig through our American R&B; and soul vaults and repackage them for new ears in the digital age.

While previous releases on the London-based Honest Jon's label at least looked to their isle's own for tasteful calypso and dancehall sides, they've now turned their attention to the crucial work done down at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, at the end of the 60s' pipe dream and on through the 70s' rough soul-survivalism. Behind only the mighty Stax label and house band in terms of Top 40 success, they churned out gritty Southern soul at a pill and whiskey-fueled pace. The consistency of this powerhouse and stable of artists deserved documentation beyond the Percy Sledge, Etta James, and Aretha Franklin sides continually sold to Big Chillers. Though her record has now been reissued Stateside as well-- on Astralwerks, of all labels-- it was Honest Jon's that first brought attention to this 26-track collection of songs from forgotten vocalist Candi Staton, whose vocal range falls squarely between the Queen of Soul and Marie Queenie Lyons.

Reared on church singing and gospel groups, and ironically ignoring her voice to raise a family with an abusive preacher's son, one fateful night out brought her to the attention of singer Clarence Carter and ultimately the owner of Fame Studios, where she would record all of these sides. As love returns as an album-length theme (everyone from Outkast to Superpitcher has recently succumbed to its onus), here it comes in three-minute chunky cuts, world-wise beyond Staton's years. In each of her songs, love is cast as irrational, temporal, and sinful. There are at least four cheating songs, none of them shying away from their awful truths. And then there's love as sweet entanglement, rendered in the South's down-home fetter metaphors of the chain, the prison, the fishhook, and the puppet string. And let's not leave out that love is also without age or legal boundary, as songs like "I'd Rather Be an Old Man's Sweetheart (Than a Young Man's Fool)" and "Another Man's Woman, Another Woman's Man" lay out explicitly.

The earlier tracks are tougher, with muscular bass and snares like rifle shots, as Staton testifies, pleads, and cries until she's hoarse, boasts, or else shouts aloud her tales of love gone bad or love too good to last. I return more to the middle of this set, though, to the country comforts of Candi's interpretations of soul as well as country standards as her voice finds new nuances in the worn words. Her rasp elevates "That's How Strong My Love Is" to the same level as Otis Redding and O.V. Wright's own takes. Though I may be more familiar with Patsy Cline's heartbreaking loss on "He Called Me Baby", Staton's strength makes known the more redemptive side of the song. With the addition of string sections that come later to the Muscle Shoals sound, "Stand by Your Man" is sharper than the syrupy Tammy Wynette original. And Staton's vocal performance on "In the Ghetto" even wrought fanmail from Elvis himself.

26 tracks is a bit much to get through in one sitting, but the compilers have mixed it all up nicely, the slow-boiling, gospel-based ballads leading into the more ecstatic brassy blasts and natural funk of the uptempo tracks. And given that even the least-crucial songs feature a tough backing band and a powerful, raspy performance from Candi, that's a lot of soul for your diminished-value U.S. buck.

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Candi Staton is a soul music veteran with a stirring voice that can convey the weight of anguish and the joy of rapture. Her new album, His Hands, is a rich mixture of R&B and country standards, several self-penned songs, and an unlikely collaboration with indie songwriter Will Oldham.

Staton's musical roots include membership in the 1950s Jewell Gospel Trio, which toured alongside icons such as Mahalia Jackson and the Soul Stirrers. She embarked on a solo career in the '60s up through the '70s, when she earned several Grammy nominations.

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