On October 30, Connecticut saxophonist Matt Parker releases Sugarfoot Stomp on his label, BYNK Records. It is the debut album by The Candy Shop Boys, the New York band from the film John Wick. Parker played tenor saxophone with the band for nearly a decade.
From 2009 to about 2017, the quintet played more than 150 shows a year on New York’s burlesque stages: a weekly gig at the Rum House in Times Square for about eight years, the Slipper Room, the Manderley Bar at Sleep No More, and home base at Duane Park. For years they were also the band behind comedian Murray Hill. The dancers chose their songs each night, always from the band’s own songbook.
“I love working with burlesque performers. It forces you to give your all, every moment,” says Parker. “We played these songs for years and it was never the same way twice. You can hear that in these recordings.”
Parker and the band, with violinist Scott Tixier, pianist Jesse Elder, bassist Kenball Zwerin, drummer Arthur Vint and vocalist Sophia Urista of NBC’s The Voice, recorded twenty-one songs over two January nights at Tedesco Studios in 2013. The sessions then sat on a hard drive for thirteen years. Newly remixed and remastered, they arrive on major streaming services for the first time.
The songbook runs from 1920s hot jazz and Cotton Club material to reinventions of The Doors, The Beatles and Prince. Much of it comes from a century of songs that said what couldn’t be said: “Kickin’ the Gong Around,” Cab Calloway’s 1931 Cotton Club showpiece, hides opium in its title; “When I Get Low I Get High,” recorded by Ella Fitzgerald with Chick Webb in 1936, barely bothers with code; and “The Candy Man,” recorded by Rosetta Howard with the Harlem Hamfats in 1938, is dealer and double entendre in one. The title track began as King Oliver’s “Dippermouth Blues” in 1923 and was renamed when Fletcher Henderson made it a national hit in 1925. Nobody is quite sure what a “sugar foot” was, which suits a record full of double meanings. Dr. Reggie Quinerly’s liner notes and The Coded Songbook, a decoder Parker wrote, unpack what these songs were really saying.
Parker’s own favorite is Duke Ellington and Bubber Miley’s “Black and Tan Fantasy,” which closes on Chopin’s funeral march. “It was one of my favorite songs to perform,” he says. “Scott and I would ride over the top of this kind of hurricane of sound that the rhythm section would create.”
After more than twenty years as a working saxophonist in Brooklyn, touring with Maynard Ferguson’s Big Bop Nouveau Band, Postmodern Jukebox and Dorrance Dance, Parker moved his family to the Hartford area. He runs BYNK Records from here and works with students at Hall High School in West Hartford.
Sugarfoot Stomp is out Friday, October 30, 2026, on all major streaming services.
Pre-save Sugarfoot Stomp: https://orcd.co/0xdn3xr
Follow Matt Parker on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6xlbJqC9QPF7qJmcu1EcNg
Follow Matt Parker on Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/artist/matt-parker/482852783
The band’s story: https://thecandyshopboys.com
Booking and press: [hello@bynkrecords.com]
Connect with Matt Parker on Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/mattparkermusic/) and Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/mattparkermusic)
Matt Parker
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