Klarinet Archive - Posting 000212.txt from 1994/02

From: "Dan Leeson: LEESON@-----.EDU>
Subj: Re: Candy Barr
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 1994 18:41:28 -0500

I received three private requests and one public request to finish
the story on Candy Barr. So, here is a moment of madness from
my not so flaming youth.

She was 19 and so beautiful that I could not speak when I saw her,
which was twice a day, relatively nude: 2 pm for the afternoon
show and 8 pm for the evening show. I was 17 and so madly in love
with her that when she would speak to me, I was unable to do anything
but drool like the village idiot. I converted a quart of water into
drool every 4 hours.

It was Newark, NJ in the late 1940s, and she was the reigning queen of
the travelling burlesque circuit. The other headliners were Rose LaRose,
Irma the Body, and (no joke) Evelyn $50,000 Treasure Chest West, who had
had her bosum insured for that amount of money, so she changed her name
to include the sum. The times were more naive then.

Candy was kind and polite to me, but that was all. We would eat
sandwiches together on the loading dock at Minskys and she never
bothered to dress until show time. So she had a g-string and pasties
on and would eat my mother's meat loaf sandwiches carried in a shoe
box with fresh fruit pressed down on them. My mother always made
35 sandwiches for any occasion for which I needed one. She felt that
I might starve on less. So there was always plenty for Candy and me.

After two weeks at Minsky's, she left and I was unable to function
for a full week after that. Years later, she made a famous porno
movie called "Smart Alek" and filmed it in a Texas motel. It is
famous as those things go.

When President Kennedy was assasinated and Jack Ruby shot the
alleged assassin, Candy turned out to be Ruby's girlfriend. A
few years later, she was caught flagrente dilecto by the outraged
wife a man with who she had been spending some dalliance time (Was
she thinking of me during her moments of tryst? I doubt it.) and
was shot. I think she was paralyzed by the shooting and became a
Jesus freak. I lost track of her after that. Someone told me that
she appeared on TV a few years ago and rated her lovers abilities.
I was not on the list though I would have liked to be.

She was my youthful indiscretion with whom no indiscretion had ever
taken place. Her on-stage appearance in cowboy hat, boots, two pearl-
handled six shooters, and little else was a sight to blind a young
saxophonist into giving it all up and becoming a businessman. I owe
it all to Candy. By the way, she loved my playing and she did her
ecdisiastical fantasies to "Harlem Nocturne" which I played on alto
sax with a trembling vibrato. Oh boy, did I tremble.

Sigh...

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Dan Leeson, Los Altos, California
(leeson@-----.edu)
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