Sometimes records attain legendary status because they’ve been long unavailable and to hear them you have to part with a week’s wages for a dusty slab of vinyl. Their status is derived from their scarcity as much as their quality. Some records though are as precious as they are rare. Candi Staton is a case in point. There aren’t many old soul records as highly regarded, yet as elusive as the singles and albums that Candi recorded for FAME Records of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, but one listen to the sides she cut there and you’ll know that these records deserve all their acclaim and more.

There’s little in the soul canon that matches the strength and beauty of the work Candi produced during her six years recording at FAME. The songs are masterpieces of the genre, the musicianship often astounding, the production perfectly tailored. On top of it all sits Candi’s voice, an instrument of unsurpassed grace and sensuality that weaves its way through the songs with gentle strength and undeniable dignity. Candi’s voice is honeyed with experience, the experience of loving and of living, of loving and of losing. To be able to sing of love with such clarity, honesty and compassion is a rare gift indeed.

Canzetta Maria Staton (pronounced Stay-ton) was born in 1943 in the small Alabama town of Hanceville, population less than 800, and had just the kind of rural upbringing you might imagine; helping pick cotton and singing in the church choir. Candi’s father worked as a farmer in the summer and a coal miner in the winter. The family were poor but Candi was happy. ‘We lived by the barest of necessities,’ remembers Candi. ‘We were a very poor family, but we had a lot of love between us so we managed.’

By her eighth birthday Candi was already singing in a gospel group, the Four Golden Echoes. ‘I was the youngest. We all sang together and we were one of the most talked about little groups in the area… We’d have all day singing in church and then we’d have dinner on the ground. The singing was okay but the dinner on the ground was the thing for me. That’s what I lived for, that was the highpoint of my life! I loved that food.’

When Candi was ten her mother moved the family north to Cleveland in order to escape her alcoholic husband. Candi, though, was sent to a boarding school in Nashville, the Jewel Christian Academy, where she joined the Jewel Gospel Trio, cutting sides for Nashboro Records and touring with gospel greats of the time like Mahalia Jackson, The Staple Singers, The Soul Stirrers and a young Aretha Franklin. ‘We stayed on the road all year and we had a schoolteacher out there with us. It was hard but it was exciting. We were like the Jackson Five of gospel. We were the greatest thing. People came from everywhere to see us.’

“We saw everyone on those tours… I also saw the Jewel Gospel Singers at the Apollo in New York; these young girls could sing and shout. I especially liked Canzetta, whose voice was filled with feeling. Later Canzetta became known as Candi Staton in the secular arena. Many a night Canzetta shook up the service singing `I Buckled Up My Shows and Started’ or `Precious Lord.’ I related to Canzetta as a Christian and a professional.” – ARETHA FRANKLIN

At seventeen Candi ran off to Los Angeles with the Pilgrim Travelers’ singer Lou Rawls, but they were talked out of a wedding by Lou’s mother. ‘We almost got married but his mother sent me back and told me to stay in school.’
Shortly after that she turned her back on school and her gospel career as she became increasingly frustrated with the hardships of life on the road. Back in Alabama she was soon pregnant, by the son of a local Pentecostal minister, and had to get married. Her husband was a jealous and abusive man, and any hopes of a musical career had to be forgotten, but Candi never stopped singing. ‘I still sang in the church, I just didn’t do any public singing on tours or anything like that. I was just