Home » Jazz Musicians » Conte Candoli
Conte Candoli
Conte Candoli had this incredible mop of white hair, a carefully managed harvest of silver that flashed like a battle pennant when he was up there in the back row of a big band. The back row is where the trumpet players sit. This is the bridge, this is mission control.
They called him Count, this strange Old World figure, and when Count was on duty, his bandmates could be sure those crucial brass passages would bark right out and make the whole band speak.
This was true even though Candoli didn't play lead trumpet, but covered the second or third parts in the ensemble harmony.
Count's place on the haphazard battlefield of modern jazz rested on his prowess as a trumpet soloist, a narrow specialty in which he was an all time top gun. Even Freddie Hubbard and Nat Adderley feared him. His reputation can be attested to by anyone who has heard Candoli in person with Bill Berry's L.A. Big Band, the Frankie Capp-Nat Pierce Juggernaut, Supersax or the Thursday Night Band, the small group he led weekly at the old Donte's in North Hollywood.
But he didn't have to push a recording career, like the bigger names. Count's meal ticket was his gig every day at NBC television studios in Burbank, in the trumpet section of the Doc Severinsen ''Tonight Show'' band, whose best numbers were played during commercial breaks and never reached the public ear.
This was corrected when the 20-year-old band went on tour for the first time back in the 1980s.
''It was a great tour, the crowds were terrific, but, you know, we're senior citizens. We had to take plenty or Preparation H, 'cause we had some rough jumps: Ten one-nighters.
''But we had a really great bus with lounge chairs and a VCR and a bathroom and a kitchenette where we kept food. And we really needed it sometimes.
''There was a scare when (fellow trumpetman) Johnny Audino got sick in Cleveland, because he thought maybe he was having a heart attack, but on the contrary it was an attack of food poisoning. It only cost him about $2500 to find out. But that was the only drag.''
Back home in the Valley, Candoli led the Thursday night band at the old Donte's club on Lankershim, backed usually by Ross Tompkins, a fellow member of the Tonight Show band, on piano. The band usually had Roy McCurdy or Lawrence Marable on drums, and Chuck Berghofer on bass. Local tenormen such as Don Menza, Jay Migliori, Joe Romano, or Bill Holman were apt to drop by for a workout.
Read moreTags
Terry Gibbs: Dream Band, Vol. 7: The Lost Tapes, 1959
by Jack Bowers
In 1959, vibraphonist Terry Gibbs and his recently formed big band set up shop at the Seville, a Los Angeles nightclub owned by Harry Schiller. Many of those early sessions were taped, at Gibbs' request, by famed recording engineer Wally Heider before being left on a shelf and forgotten. After two weeks at the Seville, Gibbs and the band moved to a second club, the Sundown. The band was successful, drew large crowds, and was soon recording, first for Norman ...
Continue ReadingTerry Gibbs: Terry Gibbs Dream Band, Vol. 7: The Lost Tapes, 1959
by Richard J Salvucci
Someone once asked Terry Gibbs how it was possible that if you took his side men, or some subset of them, and put them together in another band, they never quite sounded as good. Gibbs replied, modestly, that it was all in the arrangers. He got the best arrangers, like Bill Holman, Marty Paich and Med Flory. Others did not. And so the story went. It would have been tempting to ask if, perhaps, Gibbs had ...
Continue ReadingShelly Manne & His Men: Jazz From The Pacific Northwest
by Pierre Giroux
Shelly Manne & His Men are presented in two iterations in never-before-released live recordings from the 1958 Monterey Jazz Festival and from a 1966 date at The Penthouse in Seattle entitled Jazz From The Pacific Northwest. In this deluxe limited edition 180-gram 2LP set, co-produced for release by the estimable Zev Feldman and Cory Weeds, the band captivated the audience with intricate melodies and vibrant improvisations driven by Manne's virtuosic drumming. The band on LP1 from ...
Continue ReadingStan Kenton and His Orchestra: In a Lighter Vein
by Jack Bowers
Stan Kenton was a man of many moods, as was his intrepid and popular orchestra, which endured until his passing in August 1979 and whose renown is kept alive even today by the Stan Kenton Legacy Orchestra. Kenton dons his carefree hat on In a Lighter Vein, an assortment of straight-ahead themes from the orchestra's jazz library, preserved in five concert performances from 1953-55 beneath the umbrella of NBC radio's All Star Parade of Bands. Original compositions ...
Continue ReadingConte Candoli: Sincerely, Conte
by Richard J Salvucci
On the old Tonight Show (as in Carson, not Leno, much less Parr), I once remember “Conte Candoli unwinding a great solo on King Porter Stomp." No surprise, I guess, for a guy who cut his teeth with the big bands of the late 1940s. But as he went into his second chorus, he quoted Epistrophy," whose juxtaposition, as I recall, killed me. Where did that come from?" But I guess it made sense, because Candoli was a bopper at ...
Continue ReadingConte Candoli/Max Roach: Jazz Structures
by Rico Cleffi
The inclusion of Max Roach's name on the cover of Jazz Structures is somewhat disingenuous. Upon opening the CD insert, we're informed that Max Roach appears on only four out of eighteen tracks. This information was conspicuously absent from the back cover, where a potential buyer would look to see if a disc's worth spending hard-earned cash on. Jazz Structures is a reissue of two of Howard Rumsey's Light House All Stars discs. The first, 1957's Drummin' the ...
Continue ReadingConte Candoli: Live at Birdland Neuberg
by Jack Bowers
Conte Candoli had many loves in his life, especially wife Kristen, their “menagerie” (four cats, two dogs, three desert tortoises, assorted chickens and a pond full of fish, turtles and frogs) and a modest but charming home in Palm Springs, CA. Most of all, Conte loved to play the trumpet and would go almost anywhere to do that, in this case Birdland (not in New York City but Neuberg, Germany) where he leads an able–bodied quartet on this lively and ...
Continue ReadingArt Pepper: Mucho Calor
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
When brothers John and Alex Siamas started Rex Productions in 1957, it was conceived as a holding company for several record labels that they launched the same year. Andex was Rex's jazz and gospel imprint but also released R&B and rock 'n' roll singles. Keen was primarily rock 'n' roll and R&B. The third was Ensign, which featured rock 'n' roll and gospel. The reason for the category overlap among the labels was to avoid having one label played too ...
read more
Video: Candoli, Rosolino + Scott
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
In May 1973, trumpeter Conte Candoli, trombonist Frank Rosolino and Tony Scott on baritone saxophone were on tour in Rome backed by a local big band. The orchestra included Conte Candoli, Oscar Valdambrini, Cicci Santicci, Alvise Verzella, Beppe Cuccaro, Al Corden (tp); Frank Rosolino, Dino Piana, Ennio Gabbi, Mario Midana, Ernesto Pumpo, Gennaro Marullo (tb); Tony Scott (cl,bar); Attilio Donadio (as); Giancarlo Barigozzi, Salvatore Genovese (ts); Santino Tedone, Gianni Basso (saxophones); Carlo Zoffoli (vib); Antonello Vannucchi (p); Enzo Grillini (g); ...
read more
Conte Candoli: Best from the West
Source:
JazzWax by Marc Myers
Some of the finest West Coast jazz combo playing of late 1954 appears on Best From the West: Modern Sounds from California (Vols. 1 and 2). These albums were issued by Blue Note as a pair of 10-inch LPs. Frankly, there isn't a drop of filler here, and the playing and compositions, many of which are by Shorty Rogers, swing with a special richness and aggression. As Leonard Feather writes in the original album's liner notes, this is a wailing ...
read more
Conte Candoli: Top West Coast Trumpet Soloist
Source:
All About Jazz
Conte Candoli made his debut in the Woody Herman Orchestra while still in high school, and went on to establish a deserved reputation as the major jazz trumpet player on the West Coast. He worked often with his brother, trumpeter Pete Candoli, and enjoyed a 20-year residence in the studio band for Johnny Carsons celebrated Tonight Show. He was born Secondo Candoli. His father was an amateur trumpet player, and encouraged his sons to play music ...
read more