Candi Staton will always remember September 15, 1963.
The singer, then 23, was visiting Birmingham for Sunday mass when the horror struck. A few blocks away, a Baptist church had just been attacked by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Spectacular explosion of 19 sticks of dynamite killing four young girls and injuring dozens.
“It was our Bloody Sunday,” says Ms. Staton, who will be performing on September 29 at the Rialto as part of the Pop Montréal festival. “The riots started in the streets. I was with my two boys. It has become too dangerous. We had to leave the city. »
For 60 years, the soul singer kept this memorable episode in the back of her mind. But she has just brought it back to life in a new song, 1963, where she recounts the tragedy in detail.
The piece, bordering on documentary, contrasts with the apparent carelessness of the songs that made Candi Staton’s reputation. Soul singer, then disco, then pop, then gospel, the unforgettable singer of Young Hearts Run Free (1976) is more readily associated with the dance floor than with committed singing. But this image – necessarily reductive – is only one facet of a fairly profound work, which includes around thirty albums in a 70-year career.
Born in Alabama in 1940, in the midst of a segregationist period, Candi Staton took off as a gospel singer in churches. In the mid-1950s, she recorded for small labels and toured America’s Deep South with the stars of the day like The Soul Stirrers and Mahalia Jackson. Her harsh voice led her instinctively towards soul music and she recorded her first solo album in 1969 before having an international soul-disco hit in 1976 with Young Hearts Run Free, a song about the difficult relationship she experienced at the time.
“Young Hearts was inspired by my relationship,” she says. I wanted to leave him, but he threatened me. I was afraid of him all the time. It was the story of my life. This song was advice for young people. I told them: run, be free, don’t be like me! »
Young Hearts Run Free also got a second life in 1997, thanks to a house remix by singer Kym Mazelle. This version brings Candi Staton up to date, as do the successive covers of the song You Got the Love by The Source (1997) and Florence and the Machine (2009).
These successes, moreover, contrast with a fairly complicated personal life. Between marital setbacks, abusive husbands, repeated divorces (five!) and life as a single mother, Ms. Staton can indeed boast of having had it all. But she’s not complaining. Because it is suffering, she says, that makes the best soul singers.
Candi Staton also does not hide the fact that she was cheated professionally, while record companies got rich on her back.
“To young people who ask me for advice, I always say: read the contract carefully! The first three pages, they give you everything. The next three pages, they cover it all! Personally, it took me years before I could repay Warner [his record company between 1974 and 1980]. »
The singer will eventually get rid of this bad contract with the valuable help of a lawyer. But she regrets having struggled so much to repay her debts and does not deny having extended her career on stage to be able to honor them.
On this subject, she is clear, it will indeed be her last tour. “I’m going to be 84 years old. It’s time, I don’t want to die on the road,” says the one who can’t wait to spend the rest of her life with her children, her grandchildren and her great-grandchildren.
OK, but not without a final visit to Montreal where, incidentally, the singer has not been since 1977, in full disco glory. An eternity, but she remembers it like it was yesterday.
“After the concert, this young girl came to see me in my dressing room. She put her head on my lap and said thank you for Young Hearts Run Free. She told me it freed her and stopped her from getting involved with the wrong boy… I wonder what happened to her. It would be nice if she came to see me again on Friday, after the concert…”
