Candi Staton - "Stand By Your Man"

In which the Queen of Southern Soul finds an anthem and makes it wholly hers.

“Stand By Your Man”:

 

Born indigent in Hanceville, AL, to a weary mother and an alcoholic father, Canzetta Maria Staton knew from tender youth the hard truths of human love. Farming and coal mining couldn't support the family and Staton's mother, tired of waiting, took her daughters and left.                 

  Staton was attending Jewell Christian Academy in Nashville when her gift blossomed. Candi and sister Maggie worked the gospel circuit with Aretha Franklin and The Staple Singers. But Staton, disenchanted with low-paying one-nighters, returned to Alabama to finish school but was again diverted, hastily marrying preacher Joe Williams in 1960.

“He Called Me Baby”:

By 1967 they were estranged, and Staton was singing at the 27-28 Club in Birmingham. Spotted there by Clarence Carter, she was soon introduced to Rick Hall of Fame Studios. Her debut “Just A Prisoner” scored with “I’d Rather Be An Old Man’s Sweetheart” (#9 R&B, #24 Pop) and the sultry surrender of the title track (#13 R&B, #56 Pop), reprised for “Stand By Your Man”.

It’s a country-soul album nonpareil, Staton bringing the form from the backroads to the big time with piledriver vocals and deeply sympathetic readings of complex material, notably the remorseful adulterer’s vignette “Mr. and Mrs. Untrue” (#20 R&B) and the hushed, aching “He Called Me Baby” (#9 R&B, #52 Pop). 

The title track (#4 R&B, #24 Pop) bests Tammy Wynette’s original by riding a lissome groove to chorus after wailing chorus. “Sweet Feeling” (#5 R&B, #60 Pop) is an ebullient blues and the grimly determined “Freedom Is Just Beyond The Door” its antithesis.

After a third Fame album, Staton left for Warner Brothers and decades of bigger, broader hits. But “Stand By Your Man” remains unimpeachable, a hit-filled high watermark not just for Staton, but for Hall, for Fame- for all of soul music. 

“Sweet Feeling”: