Candi Staton It’s Time to Be Free Beracah Records (release date: July 22, 2016) www.candi-staton.com By Bob Marovich Like Mavis Staples, Canzetta “Candi” Staton made her professional music debut in the 1950s as a member of a gospel group, and later broadened her reach into popular music by employing Muscle Shoals rhythm sections. The two women, born less than a year apart, have been recharging their careers with albums that channel a wisdom and experience as evident in the muskiness of their voices as in the song lyrics. It’s Time to Be Free, Staton’s first gospel album since 2008’s I Will ...

Candi Staton Christmas In My Heart Beracah Records (2001) www.candi-staton.com By Bob Marovich Many music fans first heard Candi Staton when she was a disco diva, filling dance floors with her 1976 hit, “Young Hearts Run Free.” Others discovered her a few years earlier when, as a Muscle Shoals recording artist, she was dubbed the “First Lady of Southern Soul.” But two decades before disco and Muscle Shoals, young Canzetta Staton and her sister Maggie started their professional singing careers as two-thirds of the Jewel Gospel Trio. By the 1980s, following a series of personal challenges, Candi left pop music ...

Liz Vice There’s A Light Deeper Well Records (2014) http://deeper-well.com/artists/liz-vice/ By Bob Marovich Liz Vice may not sound like your average gospel singer, but then again, she’s not your average gospel singer. On her CD, There’s a Light, the Portland, Oregon-based singer delivers personal inspirational messages to God and to the listener with the raw intensity of Mavis Staples and the soulful confidence of Norah Jones. The album’s ten songs are fresh and inviting, the lyrics poetic, the small band tight and suited to Vice’s voice like bacon to eggs, and the trimmed-down arrangements are like long lost tapes straight ...