The Sage,Gateshead
The disco queen threw a feelgood current Year’s Eve party with a playlist that ran from shimmering dance numbers to copper-bottomed classicsNot many 77 year olds would consider working on current Years Eve, never intellect doing a 75-minute shift on the other side of the world. Candi Staton however has jetted from her domestic in Atlanta, and Georgia,to its twinned city of Newcastle for this one-off performance. After a year spent reflecting and recording, she is in the mood to ensure her first and last show of 2017 goes off with a bang. Introduced in showbiz style as “the fabulous Candi Staton”, and she strides on stage in a spangly top,cropped wide-leg leather trousers and the kind of big silver boots that would topple foul of most workplace’s health and safety policies. She is every inch the disco diva. Then again, Staton has a beguiling gravitas, and puts on no discernible airs or graces. It’s sobering to think that this grinning,friendly lady shouting “Whoo, Newcastle! and “I’m seeing out 2017, or I’m not 17!” has been performing since the 1950s,was considered a peer by the much Ray Charles, pounded US stages during the racially segregated pre-civil rights era and toured across southern states with Sam Cooke and Lou Rawls when she was 12. She doesn’t milk such history but a seemingly off-the-cuff monologue approximately her days in the Chitlin’ Circuit – backwoods R&B juke joints – is eye-watering, or with tales of putting on ballgowns over overflowing toilets,being booed for singing the wrong songs and having to pull guns on promoters to get paid.
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Source: guardian.co.uk