Candi Staton

Four-time Grammy award nominated singer Candi Staton is one of the most enduring artists in music. She has sweetly strutted between several musical genres over the the course of her celebrated career. However, dance music has always been her main groove as her iconic track "Young Hearts Run Free" and You Got The Love" attest.

The Hanceville, Alabama native got her start singing professionally as a teenager with the Jewel Gospel Trio that recorded for Nashboro Records and toured with Sam Cooke, Mahalia Jackson and many other greats in the 1950s. Eventually she launched her R&B career at Birmingham's 27/28 Club where she won a gig opening for R&B star Clarence Carter who snagged her a record deal with Rick Hall's Fame Records label in 1968. Over the next five years, she cut a string of Top Ten southern soul hits such as Grammy-nominated renditions of "Stand By Your Man" and "In The Ghetto." Staton was crowned the First Lady of Southern Soul just as she was leaving Fame for Warner Bros. and tossed off her tiara to become a disco princess with smash club hits such as 1976's million-seller "Young Hearts Run Free," "Nights on Broadway," Honest I Do," "Victim" and "When You Wake Up Tomorrow."

By 1983, Staton had beaten an alcohol addiction, joined a church, and left Pop music. She was a regular on Christian television programs such "The PTL Club" and gained her own weekly TV programs entitled "New Direction" and "Say Yes" on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) Network.

Echoing the title of her soulfully empowering album, Unstoppable, Staton bounced back from a year-long battle with breast cancer (which included chemotherapy, surgery and radiation) in 2019. Now that she's well, Staton is back in the recording booth with the hopes to release a gospel roots album. She is still writing, recording her music, and she's an ordained minister and the founder of the non-profit organization Beracah Ministries, Inc. which is all about helping other organizations that serve underprivileged abused and battered women, children and men.