The pavement disappears abruptly, allowing for bumpy gravel and steep ascends on the sinuous hot and dry Forest Route turning into Gaskill Peak Road in Alpine. It used to be worse when there were just rocks on this adrenaline inducing one lane mountain road when one wouldn’t know what’s coming from the other side of the slope, with cliffs on both sides.
Nearby a party is underway. The party is for Cliff Niman, a folk legend who is turning 80 years old.
Ray Phoenix has known Niman for 50 years, since Niman’s days as a manager at The Candy Company, a coffee house operating from 1967-1970. Steve
Martin, Jackson Browne and Hoyt Axton, among others, used to perform there before becoming famous.
“He hired me to sing at his coffee house and I did two nights a week sometimes, “says Phoenix, moving under a tree to escape the scorching sun. He tells the story of Niman being a great friend to many people. “He was very important at one point in my life when I was down. He encouraged me. He was a very good friends when I needed him.”
The many assembled guests are celebrating not just Niman’s longevity, but also the legend that was The Candy Company.
The Candy Company at 7711 El Cajon Blvd. in San Diego— now the address of a high rise— where a Mocha Magic was sold for 60 cents while waiting in line at the hair salon that shared the same building.
At the same time, legendary Eagles song writer Jack Tempchin got paid $15 per night to play during the open-mic “hoot nights”.
How did it all start though? Niman says he was never “enticed to pick up a guitar and try to learn” the music of his
generation. He graduated high school in 1957, but it wasn’t until he had first heard folk music that he learned guitar.
Self-taught, Niman started frequenting coffee houses to perform and learn from other musicians, when Dick Russell, a friend he used to ride a motorcycle with, approached him to open their own coffee house.
“He said, I put up the money, you run it,” Niman said.
“My songs are personal songs, heart aches, heart breaks and stuff…I don’t know, I just feel like…I am not out to make money, “ he said, explaining that he never had the drive to be famous and how life got in the way with his first marriage when he had to get a normal job.
Niman says he cannot write songs when he’s happy.
“I don’t know what music is,” he thinks out loud. “It’s a compelling force. Something I’d see in the news and something would grab me and I’d say, there’s a song in that and I have to express my feelings.”
Eventually the Candy Coffee Company shut its doors because he got tired of managing a business in which they were not focused on making a lot of money.
“We weren’t profit oriented and my brother and I got tired of managing. We charged $1.50 at the door to cover the rent and paid Steve Martin $10 to perform. Then everything changed and we couldn’t cover the rent anymore,” he said.
At one point during the birthday celebration Jack Tempchin, a San Diego native who grew up not too far from The Candy Company and is well known as the songwriter for The Eagles’ “Peaceful Easy Feeling” and “Already Gone”, arrives.
Tempchin met former Eagle Glenn Frey at The Candy Company and went on to write more songs that made it on the top charts.
“I used to play several nights a week for years. Cliff was the master of ceremony and he created a scene that allowed me to meet all these people that had a big influence on my career, “says Tempchin, admiring his friend’s home. “First time I’ve been up to his house here. Yeah, I wanna wait till he’s 80,” he laughs, continuing to joke. “I like to check a guy out for a while, you know. It’s beautiful up here,“ he says.
Niman’s plans for the future are “to keep living. How do you stay old? You just don’t die. I am preparing my 90th birthday already, same place, same time,”
he said.
