Candido and Me… — Vinyl Magic

I was honest with Dizzy (Gillespie). I told him no (that I could not read music) but that I knew I could do it if he gave me a chance. At that time, my English was very limited. He told me to come down to the Downbeat club on West 52nd Street to sit in with pianist Billy Taylor’s house trio, to play a set and see if I could swing the tumbao to fit in a jazz setting. I did, and he told me to meet him manana. So I came back the next night to the club and played another set, thinking he would be there. What I didn’t know was that he meant for me to meet him tomorrow at the train station - they were going on tour with his big band. The club owner at the Downbeat offered me a one-year contract to play with Billy’s trio as a featured performer, and I accepted. We accompanied everyone that was anyone, including Charlie Parker, who used to call me ‘Dido.’ That was my entrance into the jazz world.
Candido

***The Volcanic (1957) signed by Candido, Hank Jones***

The first cabaret I worked at was the Cabaret Kursal. I was 22 years old and my salary was one dollar a night. I was playing bongó with the house band and quinto for the rumba floor show for whatever dance team would be featured. Mongo (Santamaria) was playing bongó with Bienvenido León Y Sus Leónes at the Cabaret Eden Concert when he got offered a job to go to Mexico with the dance team of Pablito and Lilón. He gave me the job with Bienvenido, and that’s how I got more involved in the cabaret and hotel scene.
Candido

The purpose of this album is to present a great new jazz artist. His name is Candido, and we think that he is the most exciting jazz conga and bongo player in the business. There are, of course, many Latin American drummers who play well with jazz groups but I have not heard anyone who even approaches the wonderful balance between the jazz and Cuban rhythmic elements that Candido so vividly demonstrates, and his technical facility is, to say the least, astounding... Though he has appeared with Duke Ellington, Stan Kenton, Charlie Parker, and Dizzy Gillespie, and has recorded with Woody Herman, Ella Fitzgerald, Joe Loco, George Shearing, Stan Getz, Bennie Green, and the wonderful Machito band, this is his first recording as a jazz soloist. We added Candido to the trio in the same manner in which we would add a guitar, as another solo voice as well as an extension of the rhythm section. We made no attempt to make the melodies conform to the clave. We merely wanted to have some fun swinging off of two rhythms instead of one.
Billy Taylor, liner notes The Billy Taylor Trio With Candido 1956

***The Billy Taylor Trio With Candido (1954) signed by Candido, Billy Taylor***

I first met Candido when Dizzy Gillespie came into the Downbeat, the legendary jazz club of a few years ago, and said to me, “Billy, this is the world’s greatest conga drummer.” Having worked with Dizzy for some time, and respecting his opinion, especially in percussionists, I was prepared to hear something unusual - I didn’t know how unusual. Candido sat in with my trio on a borrowed conga drum and excited both the musicians, who regularly frequented the club, and the club owners. He was hired on the spot and stayed there for one and a half years.
Billy Taylor, liner notes Thousand Finger Man 1969

***Thousand Finger Man (1969) signed by Candido***

Candido Camero passed away on November 7, 2020. He was ninety-nine years old and lived a wonderful life as a master percussionist, performing professionally for over eighty years. Equally stunning for his longevity and creativity, Candido appeared on hundreds of albums with Count Basie, Art Blakey, Tony Bennett, Ray Charles, Stan Getz, Elvin Jones, Quincy Jones, Charles Mingus and so many others. The last time I saw him in April 2017, he was sitting in with fellow nonagenarian pianist Randy Weston. Though he needed a walker to get to the stage, once seated behind his three-conga kit, his extraordinary rthymic skills shone as though he had sipped a secret elixir from a fountain.

***MSA Sabroso (1962) signed by Candido***

Growing up in a barrio of Havana, Cuba called “El Cerro,” Candido remembered, “My barrio in La Habana, El Cerro, has its own saying, El Cerro tiene la llave, ‘El Cerro has the key.’ Cerro means ‘hill,’ but in this case it’s also short for ‘cerrejo,’ which means a latch. So people from there say we have the key to the latch.” Candido was surrounded by music in his youth, particularly from his six uncles, many of whom were professional musicians, “We had a huge house. It had a living room, a separate dining room and about five bedrooms with a large open air patio in the back. My uncles lived there, and as each one would get married, they began leaving. My grandmother always celebrated their birthdays by hiring a charanga orchestra and they would play in the living room. I remember them well, it was called Orquesta Cartaya, named after the leader who was a violinist. During their breaks, everyone would move to the patio, where the rumba would start. It was non-stop music all day into the evening.”

***Calypso Dance Party (1957) signed by Candido***

One of Candido’s uncles was especially inspiring, “My uncle Andrés asked me if I wanted to learn how to play el bongó, and of course I said yes. He went and took two cans of condensed milk, put skins on them, and put them together. That was my first instrument. He began teaching me by having me sit in front of him with my tin can bongós while he had his set. He would play a short phrase and ask me to repeat it. That’s how I began learning how to play.” From that humble beginning on makeshift, primitive percussion, a remarkable performing career was launched that would endure for decades and grace hundreds of recordings.

Candido also learned other instruments, including bass and tres, a distinctly Cuban six string guitar made famous by the blind Cuban composer and master guitarist Arsenio Rodriguez. Soon, Candido was performing in Havana’s burgeoning music scene playing bass and tres. However, that changed when he saw Arsenio Rodriguez’s band, “I saw Arsenio’s group and saw the writing on the wall. I didn’t read music and I knew that the groups would all start to convert from septeto to the conjunto format. In the conjuntos, they started to use arrangements, and I couldn’t read music. I figured I wouldn’t be able to keep up as a tresero or bassist. I had played congas ever since I was a kid, when I would participate at the rumbas in my home. I decided that I would begin to concentrate on playing congas professionally.”

***Latin Fire (1959) signed by Candido***

A return and dedication to the conga helped Candido secure a gig at the Tropicana, Havana’s premier club, when it opened. There, Candido met his great friend, the renowned pianist and composer Bebo Valdes, “At the Tropicana, we did a big show which featured Chano Pozo, called ‘Conga Pantera.’ I knew Chano from playing in his group Conjunto Azulejo, where I played tres and Mongo (Santamaria) played bongo. At the Faraon, I met and worked with Chucho Valdes’ father, Bebo. We’ve been friends ever since, and later in the mid 50s, we recorded a tune he wrote called ‘Batanga.’ That was important because it was the first popular piece to use the bata drums in a dance band context.” Candido stayed at the Tropicana for six years developing and showcasing his talents.

***In Indigo (1958) signed by Candido***

In 1946, he moved to New York City and began to sit in with jazz musicians, including a recording session with Machito. It was an eye opening experience, “But what impressed me was Machito’s band. There was really nothing that you could compare to it in Cuba. They were so far ahead of everyone, very progressive.” Candido was also innovative in advancing percussion techniques. He began to play the tumbao (steady rhythm) with his left hand, while soloing with his right and, at the Apollo Theater in 1950, he was the first to tune his three congas to a specific pitch, which he later described: “I had seen the New York Philharmonic, and paid attention to the timpanist. I thought to myself, ‘I can do the same thing with the congas.’ I began to tune them to a dominant chord so I could play melodies in my tumbaos and solos.” In addition, Candido also invented a foot-operated cowbell to the delight (and possible eventual dismay!) of Christopher Walken. “I had a gentleman at a hardware store make the apparatus to my specifications back in 1950,” he recounted. Most of these inventions and techniques still resonate with modern day percussionists.

The first time I saw Candido, he was performing with the Conga Kings at BB Kings club in New York City on September 5, 2001, days before the horrific events of September 11. Candido appeared shirtless, as was his wont, and he performed with other conga masters, Carlos “Patato” Valdes and Giovanni Hidalgo. They featured songs from their then new release Jazz Descargas: highlights were Tito Puente’s “Oye Como Va”, Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo’s “Manteca” and “El Manisero (The Peanut Vendor),”, a revered Cuban folk song which sold over one million copies of sheet music in the 1940s and became the first million selling Cuban 78 rpm single. The Conga Kings were great, but there aren’t many seventy-nine year olds who could pull off a shirtless performance. Then again, there aren’t many Candidos, rock ribbed and ripped at seventy-nine years old. In fact, there is exactly one. After the show, he stood on stage, drenched in the sweaty exuberance and exultant joy of his performance. Candido looked down beneficently on his charges from his regal, on stage perch, and happily signed a few albums.

***Dancin’ And Prancin’ (1979) signed by Candido***

I saw Candido several more times over the years, usually sitting in with the great jazz pianist Randy Weston at the Jazz Standard in New York City. Though he had by then donned a shirt, Candido’s performances were still electric when he sat at his congas, and he was always kind and generous when signing, though his English had shown little improvement over the years. One of the secrets to his longevity was his clean and sober ways, as he acknowledged in a 2005 interview, “I’ve been on the road with everybody, I saw what drugs did to Charlie Parker. I saw what they did to Billie Holiday, a woman with so much talent but with so many insecurities. I’ve been on buses with musicians smoking dope and drinking. False inspiration, I always called it.”

God bless Candido, he more than lived up to his name which means “purity of soul.” What an incredible musical and spiritual legacy he leaves.

Vaya Con Dios!