Well, it happened again. Searching for one thing, I discovered something altogether different – and even better. In tracking down the origins of a little-known Bobby Scott song called “Happy Shoes” – which I first heard on guitarist Joe Beck’s 1977 Watch the Time album – I found out the song had its first reading on R&B singer Gloria Lynne’s 1966 album Where It’s At! (Fontana).
A quick scan of the record’s other credits revealed a name I know very well: Gary McFarland (1933-71),1 a co-writer of this record’s sexy and sinewy “Hey, Candy Man.” For years, I’ve been chronicling McFarland’s wide-ranging body of work and, to this day, I am always pleased to discover another piece of his musical history which formerly eluded me. “Hey, Candy Man” is such a discovery: a lost Gary McFarland song.
The singer Gloria Lynne (1929-2013) never found one part of the success she so richly deserved. Hampered by tragically unscrupulous mismanagement, she possessed a most commanding contralto voice. Coming up in the church and well-versed in gospel, Lynne could hold her own astride, say, Sarah Vaughan in jazz and Aretha Franklin in pop and soul. In other words, she was perfect for Gary McFarland (too bad she never covered his “Sack Full of Dreams”).
Known at the time primarily as a ballad singer, Ms. Lynne scored a Top 40 hit in 1964 with “I Wish You Love,” perhaps her most enduring number. She also wrote and sang lyrics for Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” in 1965 – also a hit.
Released in November 1966, Where It’s At! boasts some very nice interpretations by Ms. Lynne, including “Nothing Ever Changes,” “Livin’ the Life of Love,” “Country Girl” and a very strong reading of “You Came a Long Way from St. Louis,” all arranged by Bobby Scott.
Luchi di Jesus arranged four of the album’s songs, notably the superb “Hey, Candy Man,” easily the album’s finest moment, and the album’s sole single release, a bizarrely bawdy “Cabaret”-esque take on “Strangers in the Night,” a number-one hit for Frank Sinatra that year. Lynne’s version of the song, which tends to come across as a parody, failed to chart at all.
That so few picked up on Lynne’s version of “Strangers in the Night” – many others covered the song, the main theme to the 1966 film A Man Could Get Killed, that year – meant that no one bothered flipping the record to hear the more sincere, steamy and far superior “Hey, Candy Man.”
Recorded on June 14, 1966, with an unknown group of musicians arranged by Luchi De Jesus, “Hey, Candy Man” is pure pop-art magic. The song borrows its Latin groove from McFarland’s funky “Pfoofnick,” which appeared on drummer Dannie Richmond’s wonderful, yet little-known 1966 Impulse album ”IN” Jazz for the Culture Set. “Pfoofnick” also plays during many of the happiest scenes of Kristian St. Clair’s 2006 documentary film This is Gary McFarland.
Whatever the connection between “Pfoofnick” and “Hey, Candy Man,” both have all the markings of a Tijuana taxi driven by the one and only Gary McFarland. At a breezy two minutes and seven seconds, “Hey, Candy Man” doesn’t get much of a chance to make a case for itself. But I think it’s a great nugget of pop fun anyway. What’s more, it makes a great case for Kristian’s claim that McFarland was a “jazz legend who should have been a pop star.”
Superbly punctuating all of this is a brass section, alternating trumpet with trombone. The sparingly used trumpet is obviously a nod toward the then-in Tijuana Brass. But the clever trombone counterpoint is, to these ears, very likely the work of Kai Winding – who at the time, like McFarland and Richmond, had an “in” album of his own: The In Instrumentals. Winding’s signature sound is apparent throughout Where It’s At!
McFarland co-wrote “Hey, Candy Man” with Linda Laurie, best known for writing Helen Reddy’s 1973 hit “Leave Me Alone (Ruby Red Dress),” and Estelle Levitt, who wrote many hits in the sixties for Herman’s Hermits, Nancy Sinatra and Lulu and scored with Carol Douglas’s “Midnight Love Affair” in 1976.
The lyrics are anything but brilliant and amount to little more than several lines. One marvels that three writers are credited here. Smokey Robinson this is not. As sung, Ms. Lynne passionately sketches out the story of an amorous woman whose “candy man” is holding out on her:
Hey-y, candy man (hey, candy man)
Got a little present there for me?
Hey-y, candy man (hey, candy man)
Waiting on you baby patiently.
And hey-y, candy man (hey, candy man)
What’s a lovin’ mama got to do?
Oh-oh, whoa, whoa-ooh, candy man (oh, candy man)
Isn’t all my love enough for you?
You know, it’s party time and you know that I’m willing
To be extra sweet and I feel you come thriilling
Don’t you know how I need you right now…plea-ease.
Hey, hey, hey, hey, candy man (hey, candy man)
Hey, hey, hey, hey-ie candy man (hey candy man)
Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey-ie candy man (hey candy man)
A-hey candy man, a-hey candy man, hey candy man, a-hey hey, hey, hey.
But are we talking love here…or drugs? A case could be made that one’s a metaphor for the other and maybe that’s the point. Of course, “party time” works for either. But while “a little present” makes a stronger case for drugs (unless we’re being ironic), the startling line (for 1966!) “I feel you come thrilling” gets my vote for love – a full decade before Prince!
Ms. Lynne recorded increasingly more soulful records for the next decade or so but more sporadically thereafter. By the late eighties, she was in more jazz-like settings for the Muse and HighNote labels. It was for HighNote she waxed her “swan song” From My Heart to Yours (2007), a disc produced by the estimable Todd Barkan and featuring David “Fathead” Newman.
”Hey, Candy Man” is a hint of what might have been – for Gloria Lynne and Gary McFarland, too.
Endnote:
- My copy of Where It’s At! (Fontana SRF 67555) incorrectly credits “Hey, Candy Man” to “C. McFarland,” while the single issue of the song (Fontana F-1554) correctly credits “G. McFarland.” The song’s publisher confirms that the credit does, indeed, belong to Gary McFarland. ↩︎