[msb-alumni] Candido Camero, 99, Conga Master and Jazz Innovator, Dies at 99 on November 7, 2020
- From: Steve <pipeguy920@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: <msb-alumni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 26 Nov 2020 11:50:32 -0500
BlankCandido Camero, 99, Conga Master and Jazz Innovator. By Neil Genzlinger.
He brought Afro-Cuban influences to American ensembles and dazzled audiences
with his
virtuosic multiple-drum technique.
"When you talk about percussion, particularly the evolution of conga playing,
you're talking
about two periods -- before C? ndido and after C? ndido," the Grammy-nominated
percussionist
and bandleader Bobby Sanabria said on Friday, having just attended a memorial
service for
Candido Camero, who died on Nov 7 at 99. "His contributions were literally game
changing."
Mr. Camero -- just Candido to most fans and fellow musicians -- took brought
his Afro-Cuban
musical influences to the United States from Cuba in the middle of the last
century and
brought a new dimension to both Latin music and jazz. He played multiple conga
drums
simultaneously, something new at the time, and introduced other innovations as
he performed
with top names like Dizzy Gillespie and Stan Kenton.
"More than any other Latin percussionist of his generation, Candido succeeded
in making the
sound of the conga drum a standard coloration in straight-ahead jazz rhythm
sections," Raul
A. Fernandez, emeritus professor of Chicano and Latin studies at the University
of
California, Irvine, who wrote about Mr. Camero in "From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to
Latin Jazz"
(2006), said by email.
Mr. Sanabria, in an email interview, rattled off Mr. Camero's list of
innovations:
"He developed coordinated independence as applied to the congas and bongo --
being able to
keep a steady rhythm with one hand while soloing with the other.
He was the first to develop the techniques to play multiple percussion
instruments
simultaneously, sounding like three or four players.
He was the first to tune multiple congas to specific pitches so he could play
melodies on
them, and he was an inventor as well. In 1950 he created the first device for
a player to
be able to play a cowbell with one's foot."
The National Endowment for the Arts, which designated Mr. Camero a Jazz Master
in 2008,
posted news of his death, at his home in New York.
Candido Camero was born on April 22, 1921, in Havana to C? ndido Camero and
Caridad Guerra.
His father worked at a factory that made soda bottles, and his mother was a
homemaker. He
said he began drumming when he was 4, pounding on empty condensed milk cans,
tutored by an
uncle who played the bongos. He also learned to play the bass and the tres, a
Cuban stringed
instrument.
By 14 he was playing professionally. In an interview for the Smithsonian Jazz
Oral History
Program in 1999, Mr. Camero described the precautions his father had taken to
keep him on
the straight and narrow.
"As soon as I came home, my dad would say, 'Say ha,' he recalled. "And I said,
"Ha ha." "And
then he'd say: "Only one ha is needed. One is enough." "He wanted to smell my
breath to see
if I had been drinking."
In the 1930s and '40s, Mr. Camero played one instrument or another in a variety
of groups,
performing in nightclubs and street parades and on the radio. For years he was
part of the
orchestra at the Tropicana nightclub in Havana. A job backing the dance duo
Carmen and
Rolando proved to be pivotal. He had accompanied them in performances
throughout Cuba when
the act was invited to the United States in 1946. In Cuba they had performed
with two
percussionists, one of whom played bongos while Mr. Camero played the quinto, a
drum with a
higher-pitch than that of the standard conga. The travel budget, though,
allowed for only
one percussionist; they took Mr. Camero. And he introduced a new flourish. 'I
said, 'OK, I'm
going to try something to see if you like it and if it works,' he recalled in
the oral
history. 'And they said, 'What is it? I say, 'Well, I'm going to surprise you.
Then I
brought the conga and a quinto. At showtime, I began to play the rhythm with my
left hand on
the conga and to do what the bongo player was supposed to do with my right hand
on the
quinto, to mark the steps when they were dancing. That was the first idea, the
low drum and
the quinto at the same time. The tour opened up numerous opportunities for Mr.
Camero in the
United States -- with the pianist Billy Taylor's trio, the bands of Gillespie
and Kenton,
and others. He soon settled in New York, and he kept on innovating. By 1952 he
was playing
three congas at once and tuning them in such a way that he could carry a
melody. When he
would solo with Kenton's orchestra in the mid-1950s, he added adornments that
made him a
virtual one-man band. 'I used the conga, bass drum and hi-hat to carry the
rhythm by myself
instead of the drum set,' he explained, 'accompanying myself rhythmically at
the same time
that I took my conga solo. He adapted these dazzling techniques to a range of
bandleaders
and musical styles, and he, in turn, influenced those styles. 'To me,'
Professor Fernandez
said, 'his greatest contribution was establishing the conga drum as an
integral, if not
essential, component of the modern straight-ahead jazz percussion scheme and
securing a
place for the 'Latin tinge' among the many rhythmic tinges available to the
modern jazz
drummer. His versatility landed Mr. Camero in countless recording sessions.
'His complete
list of recordings as a sideman is awesome,' Professor Fernandez said. 'Woody
Herman, Art
Blakey, Ray Charles, Kenny Burrell, Erroll Garner, Stan Getz, Count Basie --
the list is
rather long. Mr. Sanabria said that Mr. Camero had more than 1,000 recording
credits,
including numerous albums as a leader. During a 1999 performance at Birdland in
Manhattan at
which Mr. Sanabria was leading one of his large ensembles, he brought out Mr.
Camero for a
guest appearance. Peter Watrous, reviewing the performance in The New York
Times, made it
sound as if Mr. Camero had stolen the show. 'Mr. Camero has access to the
divine,' Mr.
Watrous wrote, 'and when he began to play, the music changed. He uses several
tuned conga
drums, and he began by playing melodies carefully. His playing makes sense, it
has cadences,
and it starts and finishes logically. And he swings. Mr. Camero was still
performing in his
mid-90s. His survivors include a daughter, Emerita Camero Dradenes, and a
grandson. Mr.
Sanabria summed up Mr. Camero's career succinctly: 'Every percussionist working
today, in
any context, owes a debt of gratitude to him.
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