Grateful Dead: Candyman (music only)
Grateful Dead: Candyman (interview)
Candyman: purchase link @ amazon
Searching through the SMM archives to see if this song had
been done before, I found that although we have nigh on 20 Grateful Dead posts,
this isn’t one of them. (Incidentally, to search SMM, type http://sixsongs.blogspot.com/search/label/yoursearchtermhere
in your browser.)
Mississippi John Hurt, singing about the Candy Man back in
1928, warned his (lady) listeners “..dont stand too close … “ because the Candy
Man had a stick of candy “just nine inch long”. The Grateful Dead, for their part, tell us to
“Look out, look out” … “when I get back to Memphis, be one less man alive …” On your guard!
Actually, the Candyman’s reputation is either as a womanizer
who’ll take your girl or alternatively, as a drug dealer who'll waste your life and take your money for his goods. In short, someone you definitely want to beware of. The Dead lyrics include references to both. In the interview above,
Bob Weir calls the character of their version a “roomy persona”. Make of that what you will, but keep in mind that the date is ~ 1970.
The Dead's Candyman appeared first on their 1970 release American Beauty along with
various other songs warning you about
things you might want to steer clear of, for example, “Friend of the Devil.”
For your listening pleasure, I took the liberty of chopping
up the original file hosted at archive.org into two parts: extracting the song
itself from the longer file that begins with an interview with Bob Weir and
Jerry Garcia – so’s you can choose to listen to them separately. You can find
the full uncut copy here