'No,
you're the real Count!'
Conte Candoli
(1927-2001) tells one in his NBC dressing room in the
1980s.
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.''
Old
jazz
hands
on
a
Thursday
night
at
Donte's:
Count,
Leroy
Vinnegar
and
Roy
McCurdy
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.
Sometimes
trumpeter Sal Marquez, a fellow Woody
Herman alumnus, would sit in; Al Cohn's
son Joe, the guitarist, came around every
few months with his Boston cohorts when
the Artie Shaw band played Disneyland. In
essence, the Thursday Night Band hosted
the oldest permanent floating jam session
in L.A.
And
every once in a while, Count's brother
Pete Candoli, dean of the studio
stalwarts and like his little brother a
name band veteran, would stop by
with his Martin Committee model
trumpet.
Pete
helps Count at Charley O's in spring,
2001.
Then
the band became the Candoli Brothers,
and you had to look out, because
the two dashing kinsmen from the South
Side of Mishawaka, Ind., were a sight and
a sound to behold. You had to go back to
Louis Armstrong and Buddy Bolden for a
pair of trumpeters like these.
Chest
out, shoulders back and horn straight
out, Pete looked like a bandmaster from
''The Music Man,'' as he and Conte went
through their carefully polished duets on
numbers like ''Jitterbug Waltz,''
''Willow Weep for Me,'' and ''Round
Midnight''
Count,
whose given name is Secondo, (meaning the
second son in Italian,) held his head
down and angled his horn at the floor. He
looked like a bandit as he harmonized,
dark and soulful, while Pete played the
melody, bright and bouyant.
Every
so often, Pete would wipe Count's head
with a handkerchief, or Count would hold
his horn out bell-to-chin, as though it
were a violin, and pretend to bow it.
You'd think you were at the London
Palladium, watching a pair of music hall
comics.
Pete
started out in the band business with
Tommy Dorsey, and he's one of the great
lead players. His solos are urgent but
dignified, and he likes to throw in a
little Stravinsky or Bartok for a touch
of humor.
Conte's
solos were sardonic and bluesy, full of
impossible feats like two octave grace
notes, high velocity drum rolls on a
single note, and intricate cadenzas that
might have been played by Bud Powell, the
pianist.
His
first job
was
with Woody Herman, in the summer of 1943,
when Conte
 was
16 years old. They wanted Pete, who was
20, but he was working with Benny Goodman
at the time.
''They
(the Herman band) were in Chicago, and my
home town is like a hundred miles from
Chicago," Conte recalled for a
reporter. "They figured 'Well,
Pete's not available, why not try his kid
brother, I heard he plays good.' Sheeesh!
''I
joined the band at the Oriental Theater
in Chicago, and Dave Tough was on drums;
Chubby Jackson, bass; Flip Phillips,
tenor; Bill Harris, trombone; Neil Hefti
and Sonny Berman on trumpets, and Ralph
Burns on piano. I mean, jeeze!
The
brothers
get
set
at
Charley
O's
''We
played 'Woodchopper's Ball,' and I'm so
nervous, I can't believe it, man, I'm in
the f---ing band! And Woody points to me,
and I play a chorus, and he points again!
You know, one more! And the first chorus,
I was playing all right, but I couldn't
keep my knees from shaking, man! I swear
to God! It was the first time I'd ever
got to where my knees were shaking!''
''At
that time, I was playing like 'Little
Jazz' (Roy Eldridge) and every note that
come out of my horn had a buzz sound.''
He'd heard Roy in Chicago, practicing
backstage with a towel in his horn so no
one could hear him in the audience out
front. He couldn't wait to go home on the
Illinois Central and try that out.
Later,
Pete took him to see Dizzy Gillespie in
New York, but he didn't quite understand
bebop at his tender age, and besides by
this time his man was Harry James.
''I
loved Harry till
he died,
and
he had it all -- he could play jazz, he
could play lead, you know, a great
trumpet player, so clean. And Doc
Severinsen is like an extension of Harry
James.''
After
his summer with Woody, Conte went back to
Mishawaka and finished high school at the
insistence of his father, who was born in
Italy and settled in this country after
World War I to work in the United Rubber
Corp. plant.
''My
dad always had instruments around. He
played trumpet, not professionally, but
in a band they had formed at an Italian
club.
''But,
the horns were always around the house. I
remember picking up a little peck horn
when I was five or six years old, and I'd
hide behind my dad, and Pete would play
baritone horn, and I'd play oom pa pa,
oom pa pa.''
Graduation
behind him, Conte rejoined Woody, served
in the army, landed with Stan Kenton,
then got back with Woody for a while. He
toured with Charlie Ventura, whose band
featured Boots Mussulli on baritone sax,
and it was Boots who gave him the
nickname ''Count,'' in honor of an
all-black outfit Candoli brought back
from Sweden.
He
toured with Kenton again before settling
in California in the 1950s, after his
wife was injured in a bus crash. He
remarried and became a grandfather.
In
L.A., he played in the studios,,
recorded frequently, and worked countless
nights at the Lighthouse and Shelly's
Manne Hole with Dexter Gordon and the
rest of the cats, landing in the Tonight
Show band in 1968.
But
Conte Candoli said he would never forget
the night he sauntered into a joint on
Vine Street and found Count Basie seated
at a table.
''I
say, 'Count!,' cackled Candoli, ''and he
says, 'Count!'
''And
I say, 'You're the real Count.'
''And
he says, 'Naw, naw, you're the real
Count.'
''Can
you believe it? Jeesh! Unbelievable.''
The real Count clapped his hands in
delight.
The
Brothers
Candoli
at
the
Lionel
Hampton
Jazz
Festival
in
Moscow,
Idaho,
in
1996.
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