Raise All Kinds Of Candy To The Stars

The story begins with Bones Howe, a producer who, along with Jimmy Webb, worked on the first two albums by The Fifth Dimension – Up, Up And Away and The Magic Garden . This work was a happy affair, and while putting these records together Webb regularly confided in Howe about how he would like to expand the vocabulary and structure of the popular song. Spellbound, as with so many others, by Pet Sounds and Pepper , he was looking to do something similarly (if amiably) disorientating. Upon completion of The Magic Garden , Howe urged Webb to be as good as his word and compose the epic song that was in his head. Webb responded with a twenty-minute, multi-movement cantata – i.e. one whole side of an album – which he called “MacArthur Park.” Howe instantly thought of another of his production clients, The Association, who in late 1967 were looking towards the experimental and adventurous. Webb and Howe duly approached the group with this great notion. Figuring that The Ass

The song was originally to be performed by Judy Garland, who was going to star in the film of Valley Of The Dolls but turned up drunk on the first day of shooting and was promptly replaced by Susan Hayward – Garland was not the only actress associated with the film who would not live to see the seventies. Then another of the film’s leading actresses, Barbara Parkins, suggested bringing in Dionne Warwick to sing it. It has been suggested that the lyric was changed, either by Warwick herself and/or the author of the source novel, Jacqueline Susann, to make it more relevant to the film’s plot. Although the song reflects a Bacharach and David influence, Burt Bacharach was only involved in producing what was a re-recording, since Warwick’s contractual obligations meant that the original soundtrack rendition could not be released as a single. The song was actually composed by the then husband-and-wife team of André and Dory Previn and the complexity of the music – the song involve

    The basic idea for the song came from Barrett Strong, who noticed, while walking through the streets of Chicago in 1966, how often he heard people using the title phrase, the provenance of which went back to the human telegraph chain of communication used by black slaves in the Civil War. Strong took the idea back to Norman Whitfield, who worked on the song and in particular formulated a coherent lyric. The first recording of the song appears to have been made by The Miracles, with Whitfield in the producer’s chair, in August 1966, but Berry Gordy didn’t think it would make a strong enough single and vetoed its release; it eventually appeared on the group’s 1968 Special Occasion album. Then came Marvin Gaye; that version took two months to record, between February-April 1967 – this was a much more complex production involving intricate arrangements for lead and backing vocals (including overdubs), the Funk Brothers and the strings and principal French horn of the Detroit Sy