The Candoli brothers: two trumpets out of one house

1923 – 2008 / 1927 – 2001

The tie, exactly: Pete Candoli — Walter Joseph Candoli — was born June 28, 1923, in Mishawaka, and his brother Conte — Secondo "Conte" Candoli — was born in Mishawaka on July 12, 1927; one jazz journal's obituary printed July 27 for Conte's birth, and the conflict is noted at that weight. The brothers were sons of Italian immigrants; their father worked in a rubber plant — the industry the Ball Band fragment carries — and played in a local Italian club band, in the same club world Remo Belli's uncle played in, and he kept instruments in the house. Both boys were formed in that house and in that world, and the Music scene's treatment in the Culture leg is the scene; the persons are this section's.

The course: Pete, largely self-taught, was his younger brother's first trumpet teacher. Conte joined Woody Herman's First Herd as a teenage summer fill-in in 1944 and took the chair full-time on graduating in 1945 — sitting beside Pete, who was already in the band. Pete's course ran through Herman, Stan Kenton, Tommy Dorsey, Tex Beneke and Les Brown, and Herman featured him in a "Superman" costume solo that the jazz press remembered for decades. The brothers co-led their own combos from 1957 to 1962. Conte became a fixture of the West Coast studios: he sat in Doc Severinsen's Tonight Show Band from 1968 whenever the show was on the West Coast, and played in Supersax. In 1997 both brothers were inducted into the International Jazz Hall of Fame. Conte's papers rest at the University of Idaho's International Jazz Collections.

The ends: Conte died December 14, 2001, at Palm Desert, California, of cancer, aged 74. Pete died January 11, 2008, at Studio City, California, of prostate cancer — the Los Angeles Times obituary gives his age as 84; one jazz journal's account said 85, and both stand. Two brothers, one Mishawaka house, two of the most recorded trumpets of the big-band century: the record needs no enlarging.

Sources:

1. Los Angeles Times obituaries, December 16, 2001 (Conte) and January 16, 2008 (Pete, age as 84 — conflict noted)
2. JazzTimes obituary record (Conte's birth printed July 27 — conflict noted)
3. National Jazz Archive (United Kingdom), Candoli biographies (the Herman years; the Superman feature; the Tonight Show chair)
4. University of Idaho, International Jazz Collections (the Conte Candoli papers)