The skill of playing the lead trumpet parts in a big band, often taking the highest notes and setting the pattern of phrasing for the entire brass section, is one of the most demanding jobs in jazz. Pete Candoli, who was a child prodigy, obtaining his first Musicians’ Union card before he was into his teens, combined that ability with spectacular prowess as a soloist. His wild high note playing was a feature of Woody Herman’s hit record Apple Honey, punching out his part over the orchestra in stratospheric range, and occasionally on live appearances arriving by high wire to land on stage just in time to play his solo.
During his time with Woody Herman’s band, he became well-known for playing his own composition Superman With a Horn, which had a virtuoso trumpet part. Indeed he played it on the same night as Herman’s Orchestra gave the premiere of Stravinsky’s Ebony Concerto at Carnegie Hall in 1946. Athough on that occasion Candoli did not don a Superman suit for his high note bravura display as he sometimes did on ordinary band gigs.
“I used cascade effects and strange harmonies,” he said, “as a brush painting of harmonies right through that composition, as a colour in itself and as background for the solo that I was playing.” Perhaps infuenced by Stravinsky’s modernism, Candoli also ended his Carnegie Hall solo in a different key from the rest of the band as a deliberately futuristic flourish.
In later years, Candioli was no less flamboyant. He sang, danced and led the band that accompanied his third wife, the singer Edie Adams, and he specialised in a particularly convincing impression of Louis Armstrong, from gravelly singing to high note trumpet pyrotechnics.
Remarkably, his skill as a trumpeter was shared by his younger brother Conte (who died in 2001), and for several years the two of them (both veterans of almost every major big band) co-fronted a group of their own that displayed their outstanding brass playing.
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Born Walter Joseph Candoli into an Italian American family in Mishawaka, Indiana, the opportunity to play brass instruments presented itself early, as his father played in a local marching band, and his musical colleagues plus their many instruments were frequent visitors to the family home. Candoli Senior wanted his sons to escape the tedious factory work he did himself, and he encouraged them to become outstanding musicians.
“Pete”, as the elder son became known, had worked with Sonny Dunham, Will Bradley, Ray McKinley and Tommy Dorsey by the time he joined Woody Herman in 1944 as part of the famous “Herd”, a riotous big band that played arrangements built on modern jazz ideas.
Following his time with Herman, after a couple of years freelancing, Candoli moved to California, and as well a spending time with Stan Kenton’s band, he established himself as a sought after studio player in Hollywood. For much of the time from 1957 onwards, he led bands with his brother, but he was also a regular feature on reunions of Woody Herman’s Orchestra, seldom missing an anniversary concert or broadcast.
Candoli was married three times, first to the actress Vicky Lane, then to Betty Hutton, and finally to Edie Adams. That marriage broke up in 1989, since when his partner was Sheryl Deauville. He is survivied by two daughters, as well as Adams and Deauville.
Pete Candoli, jazz trumpeter, was born on June 28, 1923. He died on January 11, 2008, aged 84