international news _ 12th January, 2006

Candi Staton's Still Got The Love

EMI's dance label Positiva are to re-release The Source's acid house anthem U Got The Love yet again, some nine years after the track became a massive pop hit for the second time round.

Essentially a bootleg combining Frankie Knuckles' Your Love with An obscure Candi Staton acapella, the track made two fortunes for London underground stalwart John Truelove whilst reviving the career of Candi Staton, whose best known hit previously was disco standard Young Hearts Run Free. Chatting to Skrufff last year, Candi admitted she'd been surprised by U Got The Love's success, after recording the vocal part years ago for a dieting video in the States.

One day I received a call from London telling me that I had a number one record. I asked what the name of the song was, and when they told me, I took me a while to remember the track, since I've sung so many in my career, she recalled.

The guy who gave the track away tried to hide the whole deal from me, thinking that I wouldn't have ever known, not expecting that the track would have become so big. When it did he had to make some sort of deal with me, she added.

Growing up in the 50s picking cotton and dodging the local Ku Klux Klan fanatics who were based near her home, she escaped her grinding poverty singing gospel alongside the likes of Aretha Franklin later becoming a regular at Studio 54. Achieving a massive worldwide hit with her disco anthem Young Hearts Run Free she became a huge pop star, despite the fact the song was inspired by an horrific incident in a high-rise skyscraper in Vegas, when her then husband attacked her.

He was already possessive and jealous, we'd been rowing and the argument escalated on this particular night until he put his gun to my head threatening to blow me away, then he decided to hang me from the balcony instead, saying that if I coughed he would have dropped me, she recalled.

I was thinking of ways to get out of this predicament when I said to him You know, this is a mafia owned club and I'm here for them, you gotta get outta here or they will find you. That's what made him come back to his senses. He then pulled me up, in a big sweat. I walked back into the living room and went to lie down on the bed with him still pointing the gun to my head, he lay down next to me and you know what? I went to sleep, she said.

U Got The Love (by the Source featuring Candi Staton) is out on February 6 on Positiva (with new mixes from Wayne G, Shapeshifters and Asle Bjorn.

Jonty Skrufff (JontySkrufff.com)