Conte Candoli [1927-2001] - Steve Voce Obituary for The Independent

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“... Conte first and foremost shows a knack for constructing long phrases with a variety of rhythmic twists and turns; unlike most players, who strive to play complex phrases with an appearance of ease, Candoli seems to aim for the opposite effect — his playing, particularly on fast numbers, sounds as though it is running at full steam and perhaps in danger of overheating. Also contributing to this effect is Conte's strong sense of dynamics.”

- Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz, Jazz in California, 1945-1960

There is far too little in the Jazz literature about Jazz trumpeter Conte Candoli so the editorial staff at JazzProfiles is grateful to Steve Voce for allowing us the opportunity to share this obituary which appeared in the December 16, 2001 issue of The Independent.

To lessen any confusion, since Conte passed away in 2001, the following post is offered as a tribute to his memory, as an appreciation for all the great Jazz he created over the years, and as a means of placing more information about him in the blog archive.

As well as writing obituaries for The Independent, Steve Voce has been a columnist for Jazz Journal for about 60 years, and presented the Jazz Panorama radio programme on BBC Radio Merseyside for 35 years.

© -Steve Voce/The Independent, copyright protected; all rights reserved; used with the author’s permission.

CONTE CANDOLI

The world is awash with records of classic jazz performances by the trumpeter Conte Candoli. Many of them rank with the best of Dizzy Gillespie or Clifford Brown. His instinct for timing, playing a hair’s breadth behind the beat, and his dazzling valve work and stamina made him a near-perfect jazz musician.

 

Clifford Brown was the man who best combined inspired improvisation with technical genius on the trumpet. He co-led the Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet until his death in a car accident. Max Roach offered his job to Conte Candoli. There could have been no finer accolade.

“I had mixed feelings about turning him down,” said Conte, “because it would have given my career a tremendous boost. But I’d been out on the road for years and I decided I’d rather stay home.” No doubt an incident a couple of years before also came to his mind. Candoli, his pregnant wife and many of the band members had been badly injured when the Stan Kenton band bus was in a crash on the Pennsylvania turnpike on 11 November 1953. But Roach’s offer illustrates the unqualified respect and admiration that Candoli was given by the black players. Charlie Parker approached Candoli and Louie Bellson to be part of his new quintet, but died before the group became a reality.

Candoli came from a tight Italian community and throughout his life the bonds between him and his trumpeter brother Pete were as close as they could be. “We never ever had an argument in our whole lives,” said Pete when Conte died. “I don’t know what I’m going to do now.”

Both were famous for being members of Woody Herman's First Herd. Because Conte was only 16 when he joined it in 1944 it was generally thought that Pete must have eased his way in, but in fact Conte joined Herman a week before Pete did. Still at high school, Conte was called from his Indiana home to Chicago one week-end when Herman needed a trumpet player and someone had told him about the kid.

 

“I was 16 and I could just barely read, but when I told Woody he said not to worry. He called for me to play three choruses on “Woodchoppers’ Ball” then he said “You’re playing good enough. You can learn to read later.” Conte did the job so well that, when his school broke up for the holidays a few days later, Herman took him into the band for the whole summer. Meanwhile Pete came into the band and began playing in the unique progressive high note trumpet style that gave the First Herd so much of its explosive character and made him a universal influence on jazz. At the end of the summer Conte begged to be allowed to stay, but Herman and Pete insisted that he returned to high school. “Go back and graduate, and then you can come back in the band,” Woody told him.

“Never did anyone have so much motivation to take exams,” Conte told me. “I got A’s in everything and was back in the band by March the next year.”  His first solo on record was on Herman’s “Put That Ring On My Finger” in June. I played it to him, the first time he had heard it in decades. “I hadn’t realised until I heard that, that I was influenced by another trumpeter in the band, Sonny Berman,” he said. “I also listened to Harry James a lot at that time.”

He was drafted in September 1945.

Released from the Army in 1946 he first displayed the love of travel that was to stay with him throughout his life by touring Scandinavia with bassist Chubby Jackson, Terry Gibbs and Lou Levy. “Give or take a week or two I kept working from then on for the rest of my life,” he told me. Candoli was a gentle and warm man, always slightly surprised that he was universally loved for both his playing and his nature.

 

He loved to come to Europe, particularly to Italy, and made trips abroad to play several times each year. He was a regular visitor to Britain and had advance bookings here stretching to the middle of 2002. Nobody punished himself so much, and yet he was literally never off form. I was with him two years ago at a Stan Kenton Convention at Egham. Two weeks earlier he had had an operation on his jaw to reset the titanium implants that trumpeters need as they get older. His surgeon had told him not to play for four weeks. Ignoring the advice, Candoli took searing solos in his trumpet features with the big band, played punishing quintet sessions with trumpeter Buddy Childers and then, the day after the convention, travelled to London to make a (typically matchless) CD with saxophonist Alan Barnes.

Candoli joined the Kenton band first in April 1948. One of the trumpeters, Ray Wetzel, gave Candoli a trumpet mouthpiece that he used for the rest of his life. “Not as long as Benny Carter,” he told me. “He still uses a mouthpiece that Doc Cheatham gave him in 1931. The lip is like a saddle. Once you put the mouthpiece in, it’s there forever. You yourself change slowly around it, but the mouthpiece should always be the same.”

Leaving Kenton when the band broke up at the end of 1948 he joined the Italian-permeated septet led by Charlie Ventura. One of Italian extraction in that group was the alto player Boots Mussulli and it was he who, observing Candoli’s pencil-thin moustache, black cloak and beret, gave him the nickname “Count”, used for the rest of his life by Candoli’s musical associates.

“I went into a restaurant in Chicago once,” he told me, “and somebody said “Hey! There’s the Count.” When I looked round it was a group of musicians and the one who had called out was Count Basie himself. That’s a moment I”ll never forget!”

The Ventura group gave him a fine platform for his solos, but he left it to return to Herman, joining the small group with pianist Ralph Burns that Herman took to Havana for a few months. After that a month with Charlie Barnet followed before Candoli went back to join the finest band that Kenton ever led. It was packed over that time with jazz soloists like Zoot Sims, Lee Konitz, Maynard Ferguson, Richie Kamuca and Frank Rosolino. Stan Levey was the drummer and arrangers like Bill Russo, Bill Holman, Shorty Rogers and Gerry Mulligan wrote the band’s library. Candoli recorded innumerable solos with the band, all of the quality of his feature “Portrait of a Count”, composed for him by Bill Russo. The band toured Europe, giving Candoli a matchless platform for his talents, and the tour concluded with a concert at Carnegie Hall on 26 September 1953. The continuing triumphs for Kenton shuddered to a halt with the coach accident three weeks later.

 

A few months afterwards Candoli decided to move to Los Angeles and by this simple action became reclassified as a “West Coast” jazzman. He worked for six years in the Lighthouse All Stars with Shorty Rogers, Shelly Manne and the other ex-patriate New Yorkers who made up the West Coast ethos. Among the innumerable albums he made at this time was one, “West Coast Jazz” where he partnered a devastatingly on-form Stan Getz in a quintet and more than held his own.

 

In 1957 he and his brother Pete began working as a trumpet duo with a rhythm section, and appeared with their group in the film Bell, Book and Candle (1958), celebrated by the two with a subsequent album, “Bell, Book and Candoli”.

 

Conte joined the band of Hollywood stars known as the Terry Gibbs Dream band, but he was soon poached from there to return to New York to work in the Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz band for six months in 1960.

 

On his return to Los Angeles, he became a studio musician and worked in a variety of national shows, principally in Johnny Carson’s “Tonight” show where he stayed from 1972 until it finished in 1992. In 1972 he also joined Supersax, the band assembled by Med Flory to play scored versions of Charlie Parker’s improvisations. He worked with this band off and on until shortly before his death.

Candoli recorded many albums under his own name, all of the highest standards, between 1954 and his death. In later years he toured with Bud Shank’s band but mainly travelled the world as a single artist, working with local rhythm sections. In such surroundings he tended to gravitate towards the familiar Bebop numbers that they would know. However, the best recordings of his life were in two albums recorded for the producer Dick Bank in 1996 and, the last album Candoli made, in 1999. Bank made sure that Candoli used material that was fresh if not new to him and the resulting improvisations managed to be both pyrotechnic and tasteful. The last album won the Record of the Year award in a leading British magazine.

We shared our love of cats. His five exotic thoroughbreds had included Simon, who lived to be 24 and had his photograph on the cover of Candoli’s 1992 album Sweet Simon. They easily outranked my four refugees from the Cats’ Home.

Steve Voce

Secondo “Conte” Candoli, trumpeter: born Mishawaka, Indiana, 12 July 1927; married (one daughter); died Palm Desert, California 14 December 2001.