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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.
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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 ...
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Don’t forget the Candoli...
Secundo Conte" Candoli (1927—2001) probably appeared as a sideman on twenty times the recordings he made as a leader. A member of Woody Herman’s Thundering Herd as well as Stan Kenton’s Orchestra, Candoli broke out to become one of the most sought after trumpeters recording. His resume supports this. He spent the majority of his career as a member of Doc Severinsen’s Tonight Show Band, where he worked from 1969 to 1992, when he and Johnny ...
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
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![Conte Candoli: Best from the West](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/logo/1024pxMarcMyers.jpg)
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JazzWax by Marc Myers
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![Conte Candoli: Top West Coast Trumpet Soloist](https://s3.amazonaws.com/allaboutjazz/photos/logo/bd38a72ed12128b10ddc05c6087dacb8.jpg)
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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 ...
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