MARVIN SEASE DEAD AT AGE 64

Marvin Sease, R&B singer behind 'Candy Licker, is dead at the age of 64 from pneumonia. Marvin Sease, a soul singer who took his lyrics to places that colleagues like Marvin Gaye only suggested, died Tuesday of pneumonia in Vicksburg, Miss.

He would have turned 65 next Wednesday.

Sease rode songs like his X-rated signature tune "Candy Licker" to great success in one of the many corners of popular music that operate under the mainstream radar.

In his case, that was the black club circuit, primarily in the South, where he sang songs too explicit for radio play but enduringly popular among his loyal core of fans.

He had a classic soul music voice that particularly appealed to female audiences, with a raw edge that reflected his early work in gospel groups.

Once he left for the secular world, though, he had no reservations about extolling the joys of the flesh.

"Candy Licker," whose subject isn't hard to discern from the title, starts out like a familiar sultry love song.

Sease then expands it into a whole narration, with further verses, choruses and spoken interludes. By the time it's finished, the song has lasted longer than the act it promises.

Born in Blackville, S.C., Sease began singing with the Five Gospel Crowns, a local group.

He moved to New York in 1966 and performed for a time with his brothers in the group Seas before going solo. He became popular at clubs like Brooklyn's Casablanca in the 1970s and recorded his first album, self-titled, in 1986.

That record featured "Ghetto Man," then when he signed with Polygram a year later it was expanded to include "Candy Licker."

He later recorded several albums that sold modestly well, though he never got much radio play. The closest he came to a hit was "Tonight," which scraped the bottom of the charts in 1991.

Fortunately, there's room in music for a wide range of popular artists, and Marvin Sease made himself one of them.


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