Candi Staton: how we made Young Hearts Run Free

Candi Staton, singer

I was playing what they called the chitlin circuit – backwoods, R&B, juke joint-type clubs with women dancers painted on the walls, no proper dressing rooms and hecklers. Two shows a night and most nights you’d have to chase down the promoter to get paid.

I’d just signed to Warner Brothers, though, and they were opening this new disco department. A producer called David Crawford was always in their office hustling and he’d wanted to work with me for years, so we finally got the chance. He fasted for 40 days before we went in the studio, because he wanted to get into a more spiritual realm, and asked me where I was in my life. I told him I was trying to get out of a really bad relationship: this guy was threatening me and telling me that if I ever left him he’d kill me or kill my kids. I was so fearful. He was a pimp and a con man: every female artist will get one of these guys, once. He drugged me and I don’t even remember the day I was supposed to have married him. I think it was all a setup and I don’t think it was ever registered.

David poured all this into writing Young Hearts Run Free. He had a lot of great songs, but said they were album cuts, not hits. But when he came up with Young Hearts Run Free, I instantly loved it. I heard the music first, then he sang it to me once and gave me the lyric sheet. Then I sang it in one take. I pleaded with him to let me do it again and he said: “You can, but I’ve got it.” As an artist, the first take contains the raw emotion. The hurt in my voice is real. I was singing my life.

I had to fly to North Carolina for a gig, so David ran me off a cassette and, after the show, I listened to the song in the hotel. I knew we had a smash. The music sounds uplifting, but the lyrics are dark. In my life, I had fallen into a well and the song is me trying to give advice to younger women: don’t have babies with him, because he’ll be busy loving every other woman he can, but you’ll be stuck. Know that there’s a future behind every choice, and you’re not always going to like it. The song is telling them to run free. So many women know exactly what I’m talking about.

I was in New York doing some interviews and this little girl came running up and said: “Candi Staton! I’ve got to hug you. Every day in school I listened to that song, kept away from the guys that were bothering me, finished my schooling and didn’t make those mistakes. You saved my future.” After the song was a hit, I was smart enough to gradually get rid of the guy and run free to my mum’s house. I often wonder if he’s still alive. The last I heard, somebody told me he was preaching.

Sylvester Rivers, musical director, arranger, keyboards

When I first met David Crawford, he was in his bathrobe, still composing the song. He made a cassette of him singing it with the electric piano in his hotel room, then I took it back to the office. The arranger is the architect, who writes each and every individual part and puts the music together. So with Young Hearts Run Free, I came up with the intro, rhythm, horns and strings. No one can claim to be able to pick a hit, but I heard the potential in Young Hearts Run Free right off the bat.

We recorded it at the famous Sound City studios. It was the first time I’d recorded in LA, but we had a really first-rate band. There was Ray Parker Jr, who later came up with Ghostbusters, Ollie Brown and Scott Edwards from Stevie Wonder’s band, as well as Sonny Burke, Smokey Robinson’s musical director. We had two of the original Motown Funk Brothers and Deniece Williams was among the backing singers.

There was such a good vibe, it felt like one big party, and you can hear that on the record. When we were making the backing track, the musicians didn’t know what the lyrics were, so the song became this unusual combination. We never set out to make a disco record. It was about doing what felt right musically, then Candi did one heck of a vocal. In those days, we’d record so many sessions that it often felt like another day at the office, but every now and then you’d hear something like Young Hearts Run Free. It would remind you why you got into music.