Raise All Kinds Of Candy To The Stars

For such a singular, inexplicable pop record, there is an awful lot of backstory. Chess producer/A&R man Abner Spector – who was unrelated to any other similarly-named record producers – asked Harlem-based label owner Zelda “Zell” Sanders (she owned the independent J&S label) to come up with a girl group hit for the bigger label. Sanders got together with Spector’s wife, Lona Stevens ( née Leonora Florence Cataldo); they thought about the ominous and ancient nursery rhyme “Ring A Ring O’ Roses” (ominous because it was thought to have been inspired by the Black Death) and came up with “Sally Go ‘round The Roses.” The Jaynetts were nominally a Bronx vocal group, but essentially assembled by Sanders; a five-piece line-up recorded an initial demo. The next stop was to hire Artie Butler as the record’s arranger. He was uncertain of the song’s potential from the demo but thought of things that he could do with it. On the final record he plays most of the instruments, ex...