"Candy Apple Red"
'One from the Heart', 1982 (2004 reissue bonus track)
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The Globe & Mail called the movie One from the Heart "a candy with a sour centre.”
I’m assuming that’s not the sort of candy Tom meant with “Candy Apple Red,” a song written for but left off the soundtrack (it was eventually released on a 2004 reissue).
“Candy Apple Red” is second-tier Waits, but even second-tier Waits tends to be pretty good. This comes near the end of Tom’s weepy jazzbo phase and features only two verses. Trumpeter Jack Sheldon, from The Merv Griffin Show and Schoolhouse Rock!, is as much the star here as Waits. But Tom gets a lot out of a few words. Here’s the second verse:
I'm gonna drink just like a son of a bitch
Sing “Candy Apple Red”
And drive my car into a drainage ditch
Singing “Candy Apple Red”
If the narrator is singing “Candy Apple Red,” was Tom referring to a specific song by that title other than his own?
There are a few songs titled “Candy Apple Red” that predate Tom’s. First came in 1960 from country-pop singer Bonnie Buckingham aka Bonnie Guitar. She had more success working in the music business than she did as a performer, founding Dolton Records, which released hits for The Ventures and The Fleetwoods. Her own “Candy Apple Red” was nothing close to a hit, but maybe Tom knew this schmaltzy pop ballad anyway.
A few years later, another country singer, Bill Anderson, released a different song with the same title. If anything, his “Candy Apple Red” is even more schmaltzy than Bonnie Guitar’s. It also joins that trend that was popular in the mid-‘60s of songs about horrific teenage accidents (“Leader of the Pack,” “Last Kiss,” etc). His attempt doesn’t go for subtlety; look how it ends:
When the sheriff saw him coming down the highway
He saw they couldn't stop and quickly caught his breath
As they crashed the barricade the car exploded
And the boy and girl went to a flaming death
Damn.
Or maybe Tom Waits knew this 1971 single by Motown singer-songwriter R. Dean Taylor. The year prior, Taylor had released a Top 5 single called "Indiana Wants Me,” but his “Candy Apple Red” song didn’t fare any better on the charts than Bonnie Guitar’s.
I’m guessing that, if Tom was referencing a specific song in his composition, it was one of those three.
One song I doubt Tom was referencing, given the different title, is Little "E And The Mello-Tone Three’s “Candy Apple Red Impala.” But I’m going to include it too because I like it better than the previous three songs combined. The chorus is a pretty shameless ripoff of “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polkadot Bikini,” a big novelty hit the previous year. Tom’s narrator should have been singing this.