A Word or Two About Conte Candoli

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

I am re-posting this today to honor the anniversary of Conte's birth on this date in 1927.

“Born in Mishawaka, Indiana, Candoli toured with several big bands from the late 1940s onwards and moved to California in 1954, where he became a fixture in the West Coast scene. He basically worked there until his death, maintaining long associations with Shorty Rogers' groups, the Doc Severinsen Orchestra, Super-sax and a small group he co-led with his brother Pete (born 1923), another trumpeter.”

- Richard Cook and Brian Morton assert in their Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th ed.

“... 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

Those of you familiar with Conte Candoli’s given name - “Secondo” - will get the attempt at a bad pun that forms the title of this piece.

Because I was encamped on the West Coast for most of my “Jazz life” with easy access to Hollywood and the greater Los Angeles area, I got to hear trumpeter Conte Candoli perform frequently in a variety of contexts.

Whether as a member of bassist Howard Rumsey’s Lighthouse All-Stars, drummer Shelly Manne’s Men [quintet] or the Terry Gibbs Dream Band, Conte was known to me, as Richard Cook and Brian Morton assert in their Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th ed., “... as one of the great West Coast brassmen. Often as content to be a foot soldier as a leader, he seldom helmed his own dates, but he always played with a unassumingly likeable style.”

Whenever I listen to Conte it's always a particular delight to hear him have a go at a bebop chestnut - Ah-Leu-Cha, Groovin’ High, Allen’s Alley -  and shine them into something special. The pleasure he takes in his own playing shows how much Conte enjoyed his work.

His exciting phrasing, often done with a deliberate nod toward his hero, Dizzy Gillespie, and the hefty, gorgeously clear sound he gets, are both complimented by the lovely way he paces himself through his solos.

As Richard Cook and Brian Morton conclude in their review of Conte’s CDs:

“A voice from a glittering age of jazz improvising, which was sadly stilled at the end of 2001.”

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to remember Secondo Candoli on these pages in gratitude for the many pleasurable hours of Jazz we enjoyed in his presence with three excerpts from writings about him by Tom Stewart, Joseph F. Laredo and Ted Gioia, respectively.

Conte Candoli: Groovin’ Higher [Bethlehem BCP-30], original LP liner notes by Tom Stewart.

“In previous years Stan Kenton's trumpet section included two players who stand out most in my mind. One was Buddy Childers, the other Conte Candoli. Both men could lead the five-man powerhouse trumpet section, blow the "Screechers" above it and still come forward and play pretty middle and low-register solos. Of the two, perhaps, Conte is more closely associated with the jazz idiom. Born and schooled in South Bend, Indiana, Conte took up the horn at the age of thirteen under the supervision of his older brother Pete, who was soon to join the professional ranks. Today both brothers are successful musicians. Conte has played with the bands of Woody Herman, Charlie Barnet, Kenton, and the small groups of Chubby Jackson and Charlie Ventura, to name two. His European tour in 1947 with Chubby Jackson's group resulted in four sides done in Sweden (Lemon Drop, Dee Dee's Dance, Boomsie and Crown Pilots) which were big items at the time of their release in this country.

In addition to the aforementioned, Conte has many fine solos on record, several of them with the Charlie Ventura unit of the latter forties and many with the Kenton orchestra. His earlier work most closely approximated Dizzy's style and more recently he has assimilated some of the characteristics of Fats and Miles (particularly the frequent staccato articulation and half-valve inflections of the latter).

But Conte's playing has always had a distinct individual quality about it. He has always played his horn with the kind of aggressiveness and confidence which are necessary to produce good jazz. His style is characterized by a firm knowledge of harmonics, good taste and a command of execution which is almost faultless.”

Conte Candoli: Powerhouse Trumpet [Groovin’ Higher Bethlehem LP as a CD reissue on Avenue Jazz R2 75826] insert notes by Joseph Laredo.

“Although he has long been respected as a first-rate trumpet man who executes his musical ideas with propulsive drive and impeccable command, Conte Candoli has been granted surprisingly few opportunities to record as a leader over the course of his prolific career. A welcome exception was this quintet date recorded for Bethlehem in July of 1955. Candoli had just recently moved to California after leading a group in Chicago. He was soon a vital part of the thriving West Coast jazz scene, playing with Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All Stars, freelancing as a sideman on hundreds of albums, and quickly becoming, along with his older brother Pete, one of the most in-demand studio musicians in Hollywood.

Powerhouse Trumpet (aka Groovin' Higher) is a mainstream bop effort that finds Conte and company in sterling form. The Candoli original "Full Count" is arguably the best illustration among the seven tracks of the energy and subtle use of dynamics that characterize his aggressive approach, but his playing is imaginative and bracing throughout. Fellow veterans Bill Holman and Lou Levy each have a number of outstanding solos, particularly on the opening track, "Toots Sweet." The original liner notes describe Leroy Vinnegar and Lawrence Marable as "newcomers" to recorded jazz (although Marable had already recorded with pianist Hampton Hawes, among others).

Both of these largely self-taught musicians would have notable careers. In 1956, Vinnegar played bass on Shelly Manne's Contemporary album of songs from My Fair Lady, one of the best-selling jazz releases of the decade.

In the 1970s, Larry Marable, Lou Levy, and Candoli all performed with Supersax, a five saxophone nonet that re-created, in harmonized form, some of Charlie Parker's most celebrated solos. Candoli's Dizzy Gillespie-influenced horn fit in perfectly with this ensemble.

Long sojourns in film and television studios, including a lengthy stay in the "Tonight Show" band led by Doc Severinsen, have occupied much of Candoli's time in more recent years. He is also a sought after teacher, but continues to perform frequently, often with his brother, and remains a unique and readily identifiable voice on his instrument.”

Ted Gioia, in his seminal West Coast Jazz: Jazz in California 1945-1960, offers his usual pertinent and informative insights into Conte style of playing:

Conte Candoli, Rosolino's companion in the Lighthouse All-Stars front line, shared his sympathy for a more aggressive, hard bop approach. An exuberant trumpeter, with none of the pensive moodiness of a Chet Baker or Jack Sheldon, Candoli was best at uninhibited blowing in a jam session setting. In fact Candoli, when he was paired up with East Coasters Kenny Dorham and Al Cohn for a mid-1950s tour and recording, came across as much more of a bombastic bebopper than his more subdued East Coast counterparts. An unaware listener would likely pick out Dorham and Cohn, on that date, as the ones with the West Coast sound.

Like Carl Perkins, Leroy Vinnegar, and Buddy Montgomery, Candoli was a West Coast musician by way of Indiana. He was born Secondo Candoli in Mishawaka on July 12,1927. As his true name suggests, Conte was the second son in this highly musical family. During much of his career, Conte has collaborated with his older brother, trumpeter Pete [Primo] Candoli, born June 28, 1923. At age twelve Conte began his musical studies, in emulation of his brother's playing. By his mid-teens he had developed enough proficiency to join the Woody Herman band—an engagement that was interrupted when the younger trumpeter was forced by his mother to return home to finish high school. In January 1945, diploma in hand, Conte embarked on a full-time career as a professional musician.

After leaving Herman, he worked with Chubby Jackson, Stan Kenton, and Charlie Ventura before finally leading his own group in Chicago in 1954. Later that year he settled in California, where he soon signed on as a regular member of the Lighthouse band.

Brother Pete had a more flamboyant stage presence. … Conte's extroversion, in contrast, comes out more in his playing than in his personal demeanor. His trumpet stylings, though less rooted in the upper register than his brother's, possess a devil-may-care verve that is quite appealing.

Shortly after his arrival on the coast, Conte undertook a date as leader for Bethlehem Records, released as Groovin' Higher, in which he was joined by Bill Holman on tenor sax and a rhythm section comprised of Leroy Vinnegar, Lawrence Marable, and Lou Levy. Here the basic elements of Candoli's style are evident.

He 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.

While Pete might build up to a musical climax by working his way into the highest register of the horn, Conte achieves the same effect through shifting dynamics, not only between phrases but often within a specific phrase. Conte's music is like a caldron on the boil, with individual notes and groups of notes bubbling above the surface.

Like so many of [his] contemporaries,... [Conte established himself] as a first-call Hollywood player somewhat at the cost of [his] reputation in the jazz world. Yet … [his] occasional forays into straight-ahead jazz still find … [him] playing at peak form.”

Martin Williams Gettin’ Together with Art Pepper in Jazz Changes

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

"Martin Williams is perhaps the greatest living jazz critic."

- Gunther Schuller

"Martin Williams is one of the few truly distinguished commentators on jazz and one whose writing on the subject is acknowledged as a model of reflective, informed, and meaningful criticism."

- Choice

"One of the most distinguished critics (of anything) this country has produced."

- Gary Giddins, The Village Voice

"Read anything of Williams you can getyour hands on....His knowledge of jazz is all but unmatched."

- Washington Review

"His is a distinctively colorful style, a cogent blend of history, criticism, and personal opinion."

- Library Journal

"Williams is the most lucid writer on American jazz traditions, able in the shortest pieces to encapsulate major thoughts and present them, in com­prehensible form to the general reader."

- Kirkus Reviews

"Martin Williams persistently gets at essences, and that is why he has con­tributed so much to the very small body of authentic jazz criticism."

- Nat Hentoff

"The most distinguished critic America has produced."

-Dan Morgenstern

Whenever possible, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles tries to celebrate the work of its mentors [in the broader, more informal sense of that word] – those writers and critics who taught us all so much about Jazz and its makers over the years.

In this regard, Martin Williams has been absent from these pages far too long.

So we thought we’d rectify this omission by bringing up Martin’s thoughts about one of our favorite Art Pepper recordings by – Getting’ Together [Contemporary 7573/Original Jazz Classics CD 169-2] – on which the alto saxophonist is joined by trumpeter Conte Candoli and Miles Davis’ rhythm section at that time: Wynton Kelly, piano, Paul Chambers, bass and Jimmy Cobb, drums.

Martin wrote the original liner notes for the recording in 1960 and then re-worked them as printed below when they were published as a sub-chapter in Jazz Changes [New York: Oxford University Press, 1992]. As the notes below explain, Contemporary M/C 3573 paired Art Pepper with the Miles Davis rhythm section of early 1960.

“The square's question about jazz may not be such a bad question if you think about it. I mean the one that goes, "Where's the melody?" or "Why don't they play the melody?" We could borrow the famous mountain climber George Mallory's answer, "Be­cause it's there." But a more helpful one might be, the melody is whatever they are playing, or to put it more directly, they don't play it because they can make up better ones. And if I wanted to introduce the square to that fact, one of the people whose work I could use to show it would be Art Pepper.

Getting’ Together [Contemporary 7573/Original Jazz Classics CD 169-2] is a sort of sequel to the earlier Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section (Contemporary C3532, stereo S7018), a set I would call one of the best in the Contemporary catalog.

That one was made in 1957 and the rhythm section of the title was the very special one of the Miles Davis quintet of the time: Red Garland, piano; Paul Chambers, bass; Philly Joe Jones, drums. This one is made with the (again special) Miles Davis rhythm section of February 1960. Paul Chambers is still there, Wynton Kelly is on piano, Jimmie Cobb is on drums. That former session was made under pressure, for not only was the section available only briefly, Pepper himself had not played for two weeks before the night it was done. For this one, the Davis group was again in town only briefly, and again, there was only one recording session. In fact, the last track, Gettin Together, made because Art wanted to record a blues on tenor, is just Pepper, Kelly, and the rest playing ad lib while the tape was kept rolling.

All of which obviously does not mean that either session was made with the kind of haste that makes waste.

I began by saying that I could use Art Pepper's playing to convince our square friend that jazzmen can make up better melodies than the ones they start with. (There are many others I could use, but let's stick to the subject here, Art Pepper.) And I could well begin with an Art Pepper record like Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise, for Pepper states that theme with none of its usual melodramatics and proceeds to make up melodic lines spontaneously that are superior to those he began with. And I might also use it as an example of the emotional range he can develop within a solo from a very limited point of departure, and without eccentricity or crowding.

Pepper is a lyric or melodic player (those words are vague but when you have heard him, you know what they mean). Very good test pieces for such qualities are slow ballads—and many a jazzman of Pepper's generation wanders aimlessly and apolo­getically through such tests. There are two ballads here. Why Are We Afraid? is a piece Art Pepper plays in the movie The Subterra­neans. Diane is named for Art Pepper's wife; he has recorded it before but he prefers this version. So do I. It especially seems to me an emotionally sustained piece of improvised impressionism, and Kelly also captures and elaborates its mood both in his accompaniment and solo. Unlike many comparable players of his generation in jazz, Art is not so preoccupied with making a melody that is "pretty" that he falls into lushness or weakness in his melodic line. What saves him is a kind of rhythmic fibre and strength that some lyric and "cool" players decidedly lack. (Softly, As in a Morning Sunrise is again a very good example.) For that reason, it should surprise no one to hear him, particularly on the tracks where he plays tenor here, absorbing some rhythmic ideas from the better players in the current Eastern "hard" school. And to show how well they fit and are assimilated, that ad lib blues, Getting Together, is prime evidence. Surely one of the things that makes jazz so unsentimental and fluent an art is the jazzman's rhythmic flexibility, and that is something Art Pepper has always been on to.

The events of Art Pepper's biography include the fact that he took his first music lessons at nine, but had been passionately interested in music even before that. In his teens he was fully committed to jazz and playing nightly on Central Avenue in Los Angeles with Dexter Gordon, Charlie Mingus, Gerald Wiggins, Zoot Sims, and at eighteen he was a regular member of Lester Young's brother Lee's group. Subsequently he was with Benny Carter and achieved his widest recognition when he joined Stan Kenton on alto for the second time, from 1946 through 1951. When these tracks were made he was, with Conte Candoli, one of Howard Rumsey's Lighthouse All Stars at Hermosa Beach. If Bijou the Poodle (Pepper's dog, by the way) and Thelonious Monk's Rhythm-A-Ning have a somewhat more prepared air to them than the other tracks, it is because Pepper and Candoli (whose past includes trumpet chairs with Woody Herman and Kenton) were playing them regularly at Rumsey's club.

As I said, Chambers (who is surely as innately a jazz musician as any man ever was) has been with the Miles Davis groups since 1955. Wynton Kelly's past is illustrious enough to have included work with the other major trumpeter in the modern idiom, Dizzy Gillespie; he has also accompanied Dinah Washington and Lester Young, among others. Jimmie Cobb was brought into the Davis group at the suggestion of Cannonball Adderley in 1959.

It should come as no surprise that Art finds playing with a rhythm section picked by Miles Davis such a pleasure and stimulation. It is true that those two horn-men "use the time" (as musicians put it) differently; Pepper is closer to the beat in his phrasing for one thing. But Miles Davis is a unique combination of surface lyricism, concentrated emotion, and has a decided, but not always obvious rhythmic flexibility. (He has been called a man walking on eggshells; a man with his kind of inner emotional terseness would surely crush eggshells to powder.) The sections he picks for himself might therefore be ideal for Art Pepper, for, although I don't think they convey emotion in the same way, they have many qualities in common. Miles' rhythm sections have been accused of playing "too loud" by some people. I am not sure what that means exactly, but I am sure that they are never heavy and always swing at any dynamic level they happen to be using, and that is a very rare quality. Their swing always has the secret kind of forward movement that is so important to jazz. (A handy explanation of "swing" might be "any two successive notes played by Paul Chambers.")

There are several other things on this record that gave me pleasure that I would recommend you listen for. One of the first is the unity of Pepper's solo on Whims of Chambers and the way it builds. (You cannot make a good solo just by stringing phrases together to fit the chord changes—but nobody admits how many players don't try to do much more than that.) The unity is subtle, but it is not obscure, and once grasped it becomes a delightful part of experiencing the solo. For instance, if you keep the phrase he opens with in mind, then notice how much of the solo is melodically related to that phrase. And also how much of it is related to Chambers' theme. Such unity is never monotonous because Art Pepper gets inside of these melodic ideas, finds their meaning, and develops them musically—he is never just playing their notes or playing notes mechanically related to their notes.

The curve of the solo is also a delight. In a very logical way, more complex lines of shorter notes begin in Art's third chorus (that is the one where Kelly re-enters behind him). They reach a peak of dexterity in the fourth, tapering to a more lyric simplicity at its end. There is a very effective echo of those more complex melodies at the end of the fifth chorus, as the solo is gradually returning to the simpler lines it began with. (There is nothing really difficult or forbidding about following these things; if you can follow a "tune" you can follow these melodic structures, although they are far more subtle and artful than a "tune" is. And following them gives the kind of pleasure that digging deeper always does.)

Thelonious Monk's Rhythm-A-Ning may sound like only a visit to that "other" jazz standard (other than the blues, that is) which its title indicates. It isn't just that. And the best part is the "middle" or "bridge." Most popular songs are written with two melodies and if we give each a letter to identify it, the form of them comes out to be AABA. That B part of Rhythm-A-Ning is an integral part of the piece because its melody is a development of one of the ideas in the A part. The other thing is the way it is harmonized. You can easily hear that it is unusual when they play it the first time. Hearing what they do with it in the solos I leave to you to enjoy. I was also intrigued with the idea that Monk would get a smile out of Pepper's writing on Bijou.

A musician friend who had recently returned from California and was answering my questions about Art Pepper said, "I think maybe Art knows now that he plays not to win polls or be famous or any of that, but just because he has it in him to play and he just needs to."

If a man has come to that insight, I think you can hear it in the way he plays. I think I hear it here. (1960)”

The following video features Art Pepper, Conte Candoli and THE rhythm section on Whims of Chambers from Getting’ Together.

The esteemed writer Ray Bradbury once said: “You make your way as you go.”

Thanks to Martin Williams many insights and observations, our travels in the World of Jazz a far richer one.

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.

The Brothers Candoli

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

Being around the Southern California Jazz scene in the second half of the 20th century was great for so many reasons, not the least of which were the many opportunities to hear trumpeters Pete and Conte Candoli perform in a variety of settings.

Pete (left in photos) and Conte Candoli would be high on anyone's list of illustrious brothers in jazz. Both came to the fore in the exuberant First Herd of Woody Herman, the band that included Ralph Burns and trombonist Bill Harris. Pete had played in the bands of Sonny Dunham, Will Bradley, Ray McKinley, Tommy Dorsey, and Teddy Powell, but it was Herman who featured him to fullest advantage.

Because he was so handsome and so powerful a trumpet player, Pete took on a Superman status, and finally Woody featured him in that role. In a Superman costume made by his wife, Pete would leap onstage from the wings, trumpet held high, and blast out the high notes. It was very funny, and typical of that brilliant, crazy band.

Conte Candoli first played with Woody in 1943 during the summer vacation months, when he was still a sixteen-year-old high school student. On graduation in 1945, he joined the band full-time, where the brothers Candoli sat side by side in the trumpet section.

Pete is primarily a lead-trumpet player. Rob McConnell has said, "Give me a great drummer and a great lead trumpet and I'll give you a great band." The lead-trumpet chair is a strenuous and demanding position. Pete is one of the best.

After leaving Woody, Pete played lead for Boyd Raeburn, Tex Beneke, Jerry Gray, Les Brown, and Stan Kenton. He settled in Southern California and immediately found himself in demand in the studios. If you ever see the Marlon Brando film One-Eyed Jacks, note the solo trumpet in Hugo Friedhofer's haunting score. That's Pete.

Conte is a bebopper inspired by Dizzy Gillespie. He has played with so many major jazz performers that it is impossible to list them all. Gerry Mulligan, Teddy Edwards, Shelly Manne, Terry Gibbs are only a few. Like many jazz musicians, Conte is active as a teacher.

From time to time, Conte and Pete performed together. You can hear the differences in their playing. And you can notice the warm fraternal love they have for each other, which John Reeves has captured so well in these portraits.

The Brothers Candoli are no more, but you can enjoy some of the magic they made while playing together with a sampling of their music on the following video tribute to them.