Candy Girl, Or, How To Spend a Saturday Afternoon

I went to an old-time jam with my friend Kari the other night and she played a lovely tune called “Candy Girl,” which I’ve heard her play but never learned. We played it and I got a sense of the melody and learned the very pretty chord changes for her version (which she learned from an album by the wonderful Brittany Haas) and this morning I was playing music and started working out the melody on the guitar. It’s pretty simple; it’s the contrast with the chords that really makes it work.

Anyway a few hours later and here we go. It’s a little rough but I really love this tune. It’s worth mentioning that this song, also known as “Candy Gal,” was originally a breakdown, played a lot faster and more aggressively. But in this case I like the way it was “prettied up.”