Candi Staton: Candi Staton (2004) ... plus

For many years mega talent soul singer Candi Staton lacked a comprehensive collection of her prime Southern R&B material from her glory years, 1969-1973. While it's true that Staton's chart success continued in the disco era with 'Young Hearts Run Free,' from 1975, that music is in a different universe from her Muscle Shoals-period recording for Fame and other labels. This compilation contains 26 tracks from those hallowed years, when Staton's deep soul tomes rang up no less than 12 consecutive Billboard R&B hits, a pair of Grammy nominations, and a gold album. Like Aretha Franklin, Linda Jones, and Otis Redding, Staton's voice is the sound of emotion being ripped from the human heart and offered, bleeding and broken, pleading and yearning, to the listener. Collected here is every last fantastic song from her debut album I'm Just a Prisoner and her follow up Stand by Your Man. Also from her 1972 self titled album we get 'The Best You Ever Had', 'In the Ghetto', 'I'll Drop Everything and Come Running', and 'The Thanks I Get for Loving You'. There are a few non-Lp tracks, too: the 1973 single 'Love Chain' / 'I'm Gonna Hold On (To What I Got This Time)', 'Heart on a String', which was a B-side from a single released in 1970, and lastly 'Sure As Sin', the B-side for a single released in 1972. Some of the highlights here include the stunning 'I'm Just a Prisoner (Of Your Good Lovin')', her amazing read of Redding's 'That's How Strong My Love Is,' the killer 'I'm Another Man's Woman, Another Woman's Man,' the definitive version of Tammy Wynette's 'Stand By Your Man,' 'He Called Me Baby,' the stellar 'Get It When I Want It,' and one of the few versions of 'In the Ghetto' (other than Elvis') that matters. All of the tracks here warrant their appearance: there isn't a mediocre one in the bunch, as evidenced further by the inclusion of 'Sweet Feeling,' 'Someone You Use,' and 'Love Chain,' as well. To complete the collection I added as bonus tracks the five cuts from her third Fame album which were omitted. Highly recommended. http://www.allmusic.com/, http://rateyourmusic.com/

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This is Candi Staton's live version of her 1969 deep soul classic 'That's How Strong My Love Is', that she performed at the Glastonbury Festival in England in summer 2008 before an audience of 50,000 fans:

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