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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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Album Review

Stan Kenton and His Orchestra: In a Lighter Vein

Read "In a Lighter Vein" reviewed 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 ...

10
Album Review

Conte Candoli: Sincerely, Conte

Read "Sincerely, Conte" reviewed 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 ...

431
Album Review

Conte Candoli/Max Roach: Jazz Structures

Read "Jazz Structures" reviewed 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 ...

128
Album Review

Conte Candoli: Live at Birdland Neuberg

Read "Live at Birdland Neuberg" reviewed 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 ...

267
Album Review

Conte Candoli: Candoli Live at Birdland Neuburg

Read "Candoli Live at Birdland Neuburg" reviewed by C. Michael Bailey


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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Recording

Art Pepper: Mucho Calor

Art 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 ...

Video / DVD

Video: Candoli, Rosolino + Scott

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); ...

290

Music Industry

Conte Candoli: Best from the West

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 ...

84

Music Industry

Conte Candoli: Top West Coast Trumpet Soloist

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 Carson’s celebrated Tonight Show. He was born Secondo Candoli. His father was an amateur trumpet player, and encouraged his sons to play music ...

Mike Rinta
trombone

Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

In a Lighter Vein

Sounds of Yesteryear
2020

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Sincerely, Conte

Naxos Records
2014

buy

Conversations - The...

CGD East West
2009

buy

Complete Condoli...

Unknown label
2007

buy

Jazz Structures

Lonehill Jazz
2005

buy

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