Marvin Sease "Candy Licker" RIP

As mentioned on the "Chitlin Circuit Soul" thread, singer Marvin Sease of "Candy Licker " fame has died at age 64. I saw him on a big southern soul bill a few years ago. Lots of women in the audience rushed toward the stage, and after his set many lined up to have their picture taken with him.

http://www.denverpost.com/entertainment/ci_17339865

Chitlin Circuit Double-entendre -filled Soul 2004 (and onward) Theodis Ealey's "Stand Up In It" is a song of the year

Not that I particularly care about being shocked by sex songs; it's more like, why are they even trying? Reminds me of what Xgau wrote in 1987 about Marvin Sease's ten-minute "Candy Licker" (which I like anyway, though more in its shorter 45 version): "not so much audacious as preposterous." And usually the sex songs aren't even all that preposterous, truth be told.

― xhuxk, Tuesday, April 7, 2009 4:15 PM (Yesterday

I 've been thinking about this as I just saw Marvin Sease on a bill with Mel Waiters, Clarence Carter, Roy C., and Latimore. 3,000 or so in attendance at a small arena and I was one of 5 or so white people there (yes I counted) and I'm guessing 47-year-old me was in the lower range age-wise. Plus there were lots of women there--mostly in their 50s.
And guess what--lots of those women like Sease. I mean, watching him wiggle his tongue between verses of "Candylicker" was just kinda gross to me. Plus he's getting older which for some reason made it even creapier. But sure enough, a number of women headed up the stairs after his set to go line up to get their picture taken with him. There's definately a dirty-old man aspect to the sex talk, especially as many of these performers age and their audience does as well.
I think part of the problem is this music is largely in its own isolated world and runs parallel to contemporary r'n'b rather than intersecting with it fully. It does intersect but how far can you go with the sex lyrics and the borrowed from contemporary r'n'b onstage grinding and thrusting moves? Musically, there are some modern keyboard touches and some of the upbeat songs sound a bit more contemporary. Maybe that's what this audience wants, and as long as these guys are playing arenas (which is something Sharon Jones, Bettye Lavette, and even Rafael Saadiq are not doing) they're gonna stick with what they think works.
I'd love to see the folks who discuss the ethics of the Tyler Perry movies weigh on these folks. I'm also thinking about stuff Nelson George wrote years ago about how African-American music changed from being a multi-generational thing to a more stratified by age and gender thing. On the other hand, some might argue that these sex lyrics are actually just part of a long history of both blues lyrics and raunchy comedian patter. But since I just heard a recent Mel Waiters song that focussed on economic problems in the lyrics in a semi-clever way, I'm not ready to dismiss this stuff.

April 8, 2009

from boogiereport.com e-mail:

On Tuesday, February 8, 2011 singer Marvin Sease passed away unexpectedly. He resided in Vicksburg, MS. He was 64 years old.

A celebration of Marvin Sease's life will be held on Wednesday, February 16, 2011 at 1:00 p.m., at Word and Worship Church located at 6286 Hanging Moss Rd. in Jackson, Mississippi 39206. The event is open to the public. Bishop Jeffery A. Stallworth is the designated pastor for the church.

Repurposed (some of it multiple times by now, but hey, Marvin was known to do the same thing) from the Chitlin Circuit thread two minutes ago:

RIP Marvin. In those 64 years, though, he got plenty of good licks in.

What I wrote about him in an Idolator column a couple years back:

MARVIN SEASE
This Tennessee-based Southern soulster, who was born 62 years ago in South Carolina and whose Who’s Got the Power enters the Blues Album chart at No. 6 this week, sings about his chosen topic more than anybody ever has. And it’s a pretty intriguing topic, to say the least. His signature song “Candy Licker” was a huge hit on jukeboxes throughout the South in 1987, and it’s still the first song on his MySpace page, where his slogan is “Hey, let me be your candylicker, baby.” The chorus of the second song on his page goes “put your condom on your tongue/lick me til I come/ baby, I’ll do the same for you”; toward the end of said number, Marvin includes a spoken-word part where he tells both the ladies and the fellas not to be ashamed. His sound is basically ‘70s chitlin circuit, with occasional early ‘80s jheri curl production values to keep things up-to-date; “Hoochie Mama," for instance, features Zapp-style robot-funk freakazoids reciting the names of several of the United States – beat that, T-Pain! Quality cuts on the often-gloopy 2006 Jive/Legacy comp Candy Licker: the Sex & Soul of Marvin Sease include “I'm Mr. Jody," a backdoor-man boast beginning with an ominous phone call, and the 12-step fix-your-life number "I Gotta Clean Up." But though some of his cheating songs do not muff-dive whatsoever, his discography nonetheless includes titles such as Do You Need A Licker? (1994) , A Woman Would Rather Be Licked (2001), and Live With the Candy Licker (2004.) His MySpace page, sadly, has not been flooded with cunnilingual comments.

And my (partially pre-purposing some of the above) Harp review of his best-of CD, a year or two before that:

MARVIN SEASE Candy Licker: The Sex & Soul of Marvin Sease (Jive/Legacy) The Zapp-style robot-funk freakazoids in “Hoochie Mama” recite the names of several states, and much of the rest of this Southern soul retrospective gets a good '70s smooth-jazzy funk-disco groove going, often with pre-old-school preacher’s sermon raps and not always with lyrics about muff-diving. One ballad sounds like "Tell it Like it Is”; the bookends, "Do You Want a Licker?" and “Candy Licker 2005,” are too silly to complain about. But the peaks are the 12-step fix-your-life number and the backdoor-man Jody song that starts with an ominous phone call.

Okay, that Harp review was pretty redundant, I guess.

Anyway, Daddy B. Nice's Marvin Sease page (he ranks him as Southern Soul's #6 artist):

http://www.southernsoulrnb.com/artistguide.cfm?aid=27