1 Answer

This was written by New York songwriters Toni Wine and Irwin Levine, who were signed by Don Kirshner as teenagers and wrote for his Screen Gems publishing company, which became EMI. In the song, "Candida" is the name of a girl. Toni Wine told us: "I came up with the name 'Candida.' We knew we wanted a Spanish girl's name. Rosita had been taken. Juanita was a hit. Maria had happened. We knew we wanted to write a Latin-flavored song, because of the areas that we grew up in, a lot of Latin and R&B music were being combined, and I grew up in Spanish Harlem. Loved the music, just loved that whole feel. We needed a three-syllable word, and all those girls were gone. So Candida had been a name that I had toyed with, and there she became a reality.

We just immersed ourselves into that feel, that vibe, that time period, and just flowed with it. They were all beautiful images that we thought would be interesting, as well as it was a musical lilt, the way it was phrased. We just rolled with those lyrics and music, and it worked for us."

It was performed by Tony Orlando and Dawn and released in 1970, reaching # 3 in the US.

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=7959