Candi Staton tells Emma Johnson you have to have lived the life to truly sing soul
WHEN Carrie Bradshaw strutted through New York at the close of the last episode of Sex and the City, it may have spelled the end for one of television’s best-loved shows, but it marked the rebirth of a career for a legendary soul singer.
The series following the lives and loves of our favourite Manhattan fashionistas faded out to the strains of Candi Staton’s You Got the Love. Bereft fans unsurprisingly fell for its spine-tingling lyrics and the world fell back in love with the so-called First Lady of Soul.
Suddenly, Candi was back doing what she does best: singing sweet Southern-styled soul music with tours of Europe, the UK and even a booking at last year’s Glastonbury on the Jazz World Stage.
Next month, Candi comes to Liverpool to perform at the Philharmonic Hall, and, despite the fact she will be swapping the balmy temperatures of Atlanta for the British winter, she cannot wait.
“I love it in the UK,” the 65-year-old gushes. “I have got so accustomed to people’s openness and your love for music.
“We have so much variety and so many choices in America that the older music and the soul music gets lost in the shuffle.
“But it’s not that way in Europe. I have been totally reborn in my music.”
Starting out in the nightclubs of the American South, Alabama-born Candi (her real name is Canzata Maria Staton) has released some 25 albums to date with her latest, Who's Hurting Now?, due out next month.
Like her peers, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner and Chaka Khan, her love of singing was born out of her faith.
“Most everyone started out in the church, that’s how we learn to sing,” the four-times Grammy nominee explains. “My mom took me to church from the time I was born. Even as a child, that was all I heard, music and people singing. It was in my spirit and it started to grow.
“My mom would smile at me and just thought I was a kid playing around, but my mom’s best friend discovered me – she marketed me all the way.
“She said: ‘Rose’s little girl can sing!”
