Candi Staton on the KKK, Studio 54 & End Time: The Signs Are Everywhere. "Picking cotton was very physical work, that€™s one of the reasons I wanted to sing, I thought ‘there’s got to be a better way€™. You'd be in the hot sunshine all day long filling a sack on your back and once it was full of cotton, you’d go back, empty it then start all over again. Read more...Your back would be breaking and all the time I’d be thinking ‘God, I’ve got to get out of this country; I’ve got to do something else, because this is not me.

Growing up dirt poor in the cotton-picking country of rural Alabama in the 1950s, legendary disco/ soul singer Candi Staton not only had to work from the tender age of 8 but also had to watch out for the very real threat posed by the Ku Klux Klan, whose headquarters was close to her home.

“I’ll never forget one occasion when I was eight and my mother took me to the city,” she recalls.

“I could already read then and on the way there you had to cross a bridge which had writing on it, graffiti, saying ‘Run, nigger run. If you can’t read, run anyway’. After I read it I was puzzled and asked my mother what it meant, and she replied ‘don’t look at it, don’t even worry about it’. That’s how we lived back then, under that constant threat.”

When her mother moved north to Cleveland when Candi was 10 (ironically to get away from her alcoholic husband rather than the Klan) she found her escape and destiny via singing, performing gospel alongside fellow upcoming singers including The Staple Singers, Sam Cooke and a young Aretha Franklin. Touring the States singing gospel she switched to rhythm & blues when still a teenager then disco in the 70s, never giving up singing however her life progressed.

And 43 years after she started her career, she’s nowadays recognised as one of America’s all time musical greats, her acid house anthem You Got The Love recently closing Sex In The City’s final episode while her best known hit Young Hearts Run Free is rightly hailed as all time disco standard. That she dreamed up the song after one of her many abusive husbands held her over a skyscraper balcony threatening to drop her, speaks volumes for a singer who’s truly translated her life struggles into soul.

“He had me hanging from my arms, the way you’d hold a baby, over the balcony, says Candi, recalling the horrific incident, which took place in a Vegas hotel.

“He was possessive and jealous, we’d been rowing and the argument escalated until he put his gun to my head, threatening to blow me away, then he decided to hang me from the balcony instead, saying that if I coughed he would drop me,” she continues.

“I remember thinking of ways to get out of this predicament when I said to him ‘You know, this is a mafia owned club and I’m here for them, if you drop me, you gotta’ get outta’ here or they will find you’. That’s what made him come back to his senses. He then pulled me up back over the edge, in a big sweat.

I walked back into the living room and went to lie down on the bed with him still pointing the gun to my head. He lay down next to me and you know what? I went to sleep. You know, you can only take so much, all of a sudden your mind just shuts down and I was in a state of mind where I couldn’t care less. That’s the way that story ended.”

Chatting down the line to Benedetta Skrufff this week, Candi’s actually delightfully upbeat about the trials and tribulations that have relentlessly coloured her life admitting she’s a firm believer in the ‘whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ school of thought.’She’s also cheerfully honest about her lack of input in her new compilation CD ‘Candi Staton’ which features 26 blues based tracks she recorded with Fame Records in the 60s.

“Someone called me one day out of the blue saying that I had a new compilation out and that’s how I found out about it,” she laughs.

“As a matter of fact, I even wondered, why in the world EMI would want to dish all those old songs again, who’d want to but them? But EMI and Capital Records made this deal without me in mind, and what can I say, these things happen.”


Skrufff (Benedetta Skrufff): The sleevenotes of the album talk extensively of your childhood experiences singing gospel as teenager, how well do you remember your childhood?

Candi Staton: “Oh I remember it all very vividly; those were very hard days for me. We had to travel endlessly, sometimes several hundred miles for a gig, in some places we would have an audience and in others we’d be completely unknown. Usually we’d play two shows; one at 10pm, the other at 1.30am, but I never needed to rehearse because I knew my music so well, so at least I could rest until before going on stage. After the show, we’d go back to the car, travel more and do it all again the following nigh”

Skrufff: Do you find today’s artists work as hard?

Candi Staton: “No, I don’t think they do. I think they have a lot more going for them than we did. We had an expression: ‘paying our dues’ which was something necessary back then, in order to become successful. These days, all young artists need to do is to go on Pop Idols then right out of the nest they travel first class. We had to work to get there.”

Skrufff: When you were ten, you were touring with Aretha Franklin, what kind of places were you playing in and were you conscious then of her greatness?

Candi Staton: “We used to sing in the same churches together and she was extraordinary from the start, she knew it; we all did. We had no idea that she was ready to go and play secular music, though she had already made plans to do that. I was there with her, Sam Cooke and a whole bunch of others, so even when they became famous I could always walk into their dressing room, because they never forgot their gospel roots.”

Skrufff: So there wasn’t any competition between you all?

Candi Staton: “Oh yes, there was competition, very much so. It wasn’t anything to be ashamed of though it was good competition because it brought out the best in all of us.”

Skrufff: When you signed to Warner Bros. in 74 and moved to California, how much did you fully embrace the disco world?

Candi Staton: “I was really into it, because before disco touring was hard, and disco actually made our lives easier and more pleasurable. Live performances became easier, all you needed was a backing track, you didn’t have to take a band with you and you could make more money. I honestly welcomed it. Though I still had a band, most of the time I would perform solo and I was able to make more money.”

Skrufff: Wasn’t that disco world a bit too much for you, given that you were a young church girl coming from the Deep South?

Candi Staton: “Oh, I loved that world, I loved the dancing, the excitement, the people. I used to go to Studio 54 and stay there all night, I had my drinks for free, the DJs would recognise you and bring your drinks over, then ask you to dance. It was just a never ending party.”

Skrufff: Who did you hang out with?

Candi Staton: “Let me see, Stephanie Mills, Ashford and Simpson, Diana Ross, Gloria Gaynor who’s still my friend, Patti Labelle, Chaka Khan, you know we were girls out together.”

Skrufff: You had a worldwide disco hit in the 70s with ‘Young hearts run free”, am I right in thinking that was inspired by one of your husbands who hung you out of a skyscraper window by your feet?

Candi Staton: “Well, it wasn’t by my feet, thank God, he had me hanging from my arms, the way you’d hold a baby, from the balcony. I though he was going to drop me. He was very possessive, very controlling. I was recording a show in Vegas for a whole week, and in one occasion, he got angry at me because he couldn’t find me. I saw him walking up and down the isle, but I thought nothing of it so I didn’t call him or even say anything when I returned to the room. He then questioned me about where I had been. I tried to reassure him saying that I was watching the show being recorded, but he wouldn’t listen, we argued and argued, but he was already in another state of mind. The argument escalated until he put his gun to my head threatening to blow me away, then he decided to hang me from the balcony instead, saying that if I coughed he would have dropped me.

I was thinking of ways to get out of this predicament when I said to him ‘You know, this is a mafia owned club and I’m here for them, you gotta’ get outta’ here or they will find you’. That’s what made him come back to his senses. He then pulled me up, in a big sweat. I walked back into the living room and went to lie down on the bed with him still pointing the gun to my head, he lay down next to me and you know what? I went to sleep. I don’t know when he left, you know, you can only take so much, all of a sudden your mind just shuts down and I was in a state of mind where I couldn’t care less. That’s the way that story ended.”

Skrufff: there’s that famous Neitsche expression ‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’ and you had your fair share with men, I believe . .

Candi Staton: “I totally believe in that expression, every man I’ve ever had turned controlling and possessive, that’s why I have none around now and I like to keep it that way.”

Skrufff: In 1982 you formed Beracah Records with Jim and Tammy Bakker's infamous PTL Ministries organisation, did you go through that whole born again religious experience?

Candi Staton: “Oh yes, and I still am a Christian, I still love worshipping the Lord, it gives me so much peace, I’m in a state right now that I wouldn’t trade for any money in the world, I have the kind of peace that I’ve always looked for. The Lord is my man now.”

Skrufff: Isn’t it sometimes tough to follow a religion so closely?

Candi Staton: “Having a relationship with the Lord is not a religion. I actually have a problem with religion too. Have you seen The Passion? That film explains a lot. It was religion, the priests, which killed Jesus, not the sinners.”

Skrufff: What happened when all the scandals hit the Bakkers in the 80s? (Jim Bakker was jailed for fraud, and notoriously had many affairs, including a gay relationship)

Candi Staton: “I felt sorrow, I felt a compassion for them because we can all get there, none of us are exempt from those sides of life. Sometimes we’re not ready for that kind of success, he was a country boy who was earning millions, if not billions of dollars, and went overboard and made mistakes. I was there for him, as a matter of fact, I even went to visit him in jail, I did a concert for the inmates and he was so grateful. Today he’s a different man; that’s another incident where what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.”

Skrufff: You Got The Love sold over 2 million copies worldwide when the dance version came out in the early 90s, what was the story of how that came along?

Candi Staton: “Dick Gregory, the comedian from Chicago, originally had the song for one of his videos that he made for a diet program- he was a fanatic fruitarian- and asked me to sing it, so I flew to Chicago and did it. The video featured this young man, Ron Hey, who truly weighed a ton, who never lost his weight and eventually died very young. Nothing ever happened with the song, just like these songs I have now out on the Fame compilation album, but then one day I received a call from London telling me that I had a number one record. I asked what the name of the song was, and when they told me, I took me a while to remember the track, since I’ve sung so many in my career.”

Skrufff: Were you ever tempted to stop it being released?

Candi Staton: “Well, no one asked for permission either to use the track nor my voice, so we had to do something. The guy who gave the track away tried to hide the whole deal from me, thinking that I wouldn’t have ever known, not expecting that the track would have become so big. When it did he had to make some sort of deal with me.”

Skrufff: You were born into poverty and made music at a time when most performers got ripped off, did you make much money from these early records?

Candi Staton: “I am just beginning to now, I’ve recently hired a manager. He’s a businessman so he’s recouping this money owed to us which I didn’t get back then, but thankfully I’m getting now.”

Skrufff: As an evangelical Christian, are you also a Bush supporter?

Candi Staton: “I don’t like the war. But I have to respect him because he’s our president, though I don’t agree with everything he does.”

Skrufff: Do you believe in biblical style End Times coming soon?

Candi Staton: “Oh yes. The signs are everywhere: war, earthquakes, children killing children, the internet; everything is way out of proportion and this world cannot last in the state it’s in for much longer. Something has to change.”

Candi Staton (Fame Recordings) is out now on EMI/ Capitol.

http://www.candi-staton.com

Interview by: Benedetta Skrufff (Skrufff.com)

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