A star at 11, and still going strong 73 years later, the Queen of Southern Soul looks back on a life of hits, hurt and endless reinvention

Candi Staton is part-way through a sprawling history of the days when she worked in a nursing home by day and sang in a bar by night, chasing her dreams of stardom while supporting her kids. She’s describing her one-time home – a $65-a-month apartment in “the worst part of Cleveland, Ohio” – when she pauses. “Oh my God,” she says, catching her breath for a second. “I’m telling you a lot!”

But there’s a lot to get through. There’s the sheer breadth of her work, for starters. Often dubbed “the queen of southern soul”, she started out in gospel before making forays into Americana, R&B, house, and just about everything in between, her career threatening to judder to a standstill several times over many decades, before speeding up once again. Staton’s voice is rich and warm, but there’s a bluesy, plaintive quality that underpins it; the singer Beverley Knight once summed up her hit You Got the Love as sounding like Staton was “looking at God and telling him: ‘Drag me through this, mate.’”