It’s a sprawling film that takes in Alabama’s status as a cradle of southern soul; the development of the legendary Fame recording studios in Muscle Shoals; this corner of the South’s importance to the civil rights movement; and the resonance of all these historical currents to an awestruck bunch of visiting UK Americana artists, who include Michele Stodart of The Magic Numbers and Bristolian singer-songwriter Lady Nade.
From the late 1960s to mid-1970s, she had been a towering figure in Black American music, dubbed the First Lady of Southern Soul and acclaimed for her R&B covers of “Stand by Your Man” (a huge American hit in 1971) and “In the Ghetto” (a hit in 1972).
Ahead of a new documentary paying tribute to her career, she talks to Craig McLean about going on the road aged 11, the Ku Klux Klan and how she turned her many traumatic experiences into the ultimate survivor’s anthem ‘Young Hearts Run Free’.
By chance, Staton, a young mother married to the son of a preacher man, was also in Birmingham that day at another church service run by her father-in-law.
That title refers to the events of 15 September 1963 – the day the Ku Klux Klan bombed the 16th Street Baptist Church, killing four young girls.
