Pete Candoli: 'Superman with a Horn'

Walter Joseph "Pete" Candoli, trumpeter: born Mishawaka, Indiana 28 June 1923; married 1953 Vicky Lane (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1958), 1960 Betty Hutton (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1967), 1972 Edie Adams (marriage dissolved 1989); died Studio City, California 11 January 2008.

The brothers Candoli – Pete and Conte – bestrode the jazz world for 60 years as two of its greatest trumpet players. The younger brother, Conte (who died in 2001), was an inspired soloist, whilst Pete was one of the first of the great powerhouse players. Throughout the Forties, Pete Candoli played lead trumpet in nine of the major big bands, and not for nothing was he known as "Superman with a Horn".

He was the spark plug in the revolutionary and exultantly exciting Woody Herman band of 1944. This was modern jazz in the months that Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie were manhandling the music towards their radical designs. Pete also shepherded his brother into the band when Conte was only 16.

Pete Candoli's trumpet would rise screaming higher and higher and with pinpoint accuracy over the baying ensembles of the band. As the Second World War came to an end, this was a new kind of release for audiences and those who heard the band or its records then have never forgotten the experience. Like some of the other horn players in the band, Candoli was adept at improvising riff figures which later became established parts of the band's compositions.

Candoli's nickname came about because "I used to work out all the time at Sid Klein's gym in New York," he said.

Weight lifting was my thing and so they called me Superman because I used to flex my biceps a lot. My wife made a Superman suit for me and I used to wear it under my band uniform. When we played "Apple Honey", which was a really storming number, I'd strip off the band uniform just leaving me in my Superman suit and run off stage.

We had a cable stretched out across the stage and I had a belt with a hook on it. I'd hook myself on, the cable would sag, and I'd plummet down it back into the band, which was still roaring away. Chubby Jackson, the bass player would yell "It's Super-r-r-m-a-a-*-*!" I'd flex my muscles and hit my chest several times with each hand and as I did the drummer Don Lamond would go boom-ba-boom-ba-boom. One of the trumpet players would hand me my horn and I'd play a big cadenza full of high notes and we'd take "Apple Honey" out with me screaming an octave or so above the band.

On one occasion, Candoli remembered, his reappearance didn't work as planned "and I went straight across the stage and smack with my head into the wall on the other side where the cable was hooked. I saw stars, but came round a bit and did the rest of the act, while half the band was playing and the other half was roaring laughing."

As someone who had often incorporated quotes from Igor Stravinsky's works into his jazz solos, Candoli was ecstatic when Stravinsky wrote "Ebony Concerto" for the Herman band. The composer rehearsed the band and Candoli insisted on taking the trumpet solo in the work, which might have been better played by one of the less robust trumpeters in the band like Conrad Gozzo.

He had been born Walter Candoli in 1923, and started learning double bass and French horn when he was 12. It was about that time that, as a result of his schoolboy enthusiasm for a comic strip called "Pete the Tramp", he began to be called Pete and not Walter.

He was 21 when he joined the Herman band in midsummer 1944. Before that, his incredible high notes and forceful work in the trumpet section had already powered the big bands led by Sonny Dunham (1940), Will Bradley (1941), Ray McKinley (1942), Benny Goodman (1942), and Tommy Dorsey (1943-44).

When he left Herman, Candoli played in New York with Boyd Raeburn, Tex Beneke (1947-49) and Jerry Gray (1950-51). He then moved to the West Coast where he played lead for Freddie Slack, Alvino Rey, Charlie Barnet, Teddy Powell, Stan Kenton and Les Brown before settling in Los Angeles to become one of the most in-demand studio musicians.

In 1953, described for contractual reasons as "Cootie Chesterfield", Candoli played brilliant and tasteful obbligati behind Peggy Lee as part of a quintet on Black Coffee, the album that many people regard as the singer's finest ever.

In 1956 he made a potent contribution to the soundtrack of the Sinatra film The Man with the Golden Arm. He became an integral part of Henry Mancini's music, always called in when the composer recorded and featuring in Mancini's renowned Peter Gunn series.

Between 1957 and 1962 the Candoli Brothers ran a popular quintet with a two-trumpet front line, which broke up when Pete left to form a band on his own. In 1972 he opened a nightclub with his wife the singer Edie Adams, where he sang, danced and led the band.

But he also had a deep understanding of classical music and conducted seminars and concerts at more than 30 universities and colleges. His work as a composer and arranger was little recognised, but he wrote, arranged and conducted music for Ella Fitzgerald and Judy Garland. He won innumerable awards for his trumpet playing and was picked in the Look Magazine Awards as one of the seven outstanding trumpeters of all time.

The Candoli Brothers quintet reunited many times and played at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1973. The brothers returned to Woody Herman in 1976 to play at the Carnegie Hall concert given to celebrate Herman's 40th anniversary as a bandleader, and again for his 50th in 1996 at the Hollywood Bowl.

Pete Candoli travelled to the Aurex Jazz Festival in Tokyo to play with Lionel Hampton in 1981. Although his great power was by then in decline, he worked again with Hampton's bands during the Nineties.

In 1980, the trumpeter Jack Sheldon said, "I get a lot of my work playing at Pete Candoli's weddings. He's married a lot of people." Hardly fair, because Pete was married no more than three times and had lived his last 18 years loyally with his partner Sheryl. His second marriage, in 1960, was to the film star Betty Hutton. The marriage was a bumpy one and at one point she attempted suicide. "I thought we were happy," said Hutton, "but one night when I was getting ready for bed I turned on Rona Barrett and she said Pete Candoli is engaged to Edie Adams, then I took a whole bottle of pills and said the hell with it."

Candoli stopped playing some years ago as he declined into a long illness.

Steve Voce