Pete Candoli


Pete Candoli was an American jazz trumpeter and the brother of trumpeter Conte Candoli. He played with the big bands of Woody Herman and Stan Kenton and worked in the studios of the recording and television industries.

Career

A native of Mishawaka, Indiana, Pete Candoli was the older brother of Conte Candoli.
During the 1940s he was a member of big bands led by Sonny Dunham, Will Bradley, Ray McKinley, Tommy Dorsey, Teddy Powell, Woody Herman, Boyd Raeburn, Tex Beneke, and Jerry Gray. For his ability to hit high notes on the trumpet he was given the nickname "Superman". While he was a member of Woody Herman's First Herd, he sometimes wore a Superman costume during his solo. In the 1950s he belonged to the bands of Stan Kenton and Les Brown and in Los Angeles began to work as a studio musician. His studio work included recording soundtracks for the movies Bell, Book and Candle, Private Hell 36, Save the Tiger, The Man with the Golden Arm, and The Prisoner of Second Avenue and appearing with The Tonight Show Band.
Pete Candoli and his brother Conte formed a band that performed in the late 1950s and early 1960s and intermittently from the 1970s to the 1990s. In the early 1970s he performed in nightclubs with his second wife, singer Edie Adams. Heart surgery delayed his career at the end of the 1970s, but he returned to performing at musical festivals and with Lionel Hampton. He reunited with the Woody Herman band for its fifty- and sixty-year anniversary concerts.
Candoli was featured on the cartoon series The Ant and the Aardvark, which used a jazz score for its theme and musical cues.
Candoli died of complications from prostate cancer on January 11, 2008, at the age of 84. Conte Candoli died of the same disease in 2001.

Awards and honors

As leader

With Conte Candoli
With Glen Gray
With Woody Herman
With Stan Kenton
With Peggy Lee
With Henry Mancini
With Skip Martin
With Ted Nash
With Shorty Rogers
With Pete Rugolo
With others'