Cándido Camero facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Cándido Camero
Camero in 2008
Background information
Birth name	Cándido Camero Guerra
Born	(1921-04-22)22 April 1921 Havana, Cuba
Died	7 November 2020(2020-11-07) (aged 99) New York City, US
Genres	Afro-Cuban jazz, disco, descarga, son cubano
Occupation(s)	Musician, bandleader
Instruments	Conga, bongo, tres, bass
Labels	ABC-Paramount, Blue Note, Roulette, Polydor, Salsoul, Chesky

Cándido Camero Guerra (born April 22, 1921 – died November 7, 2020), known simply as Cándido, was a famous Cuban conga and bongo player. He is seen as a true pioneer of Afro-Cuban jazz music. He also brought many new ideas to playing the conga drum.

Cándido helped create conga sets that could be tuned. He also came up with the idea of playing congas and bongos together. He even invented new ways to play other instruments, like a foot-operated cowbell.

After moving to New York in 1946, Cándido played with many jazz legends. These included Dizzy Gillespie, Billy Taylor, and Stan Kenton. From 1956, he started recording his own albums. His biggest success came in 1979 with his disco recordings for Salsoul. He kept performing until the late 2010s. He recorded several albums for Chesky Records, and one of them, Inolvidable, was even nominated for a Grammy Award.

Early Life and Musical Beginnings

Cándido Camero Guerra was born in San Antonio de los Baños, a town near Havana, Cuba. His parents were Caridad Guerra and Cándido Camero. He became interested in music at a very young age, around 4 years old. His uncle Andrés, who was a professional bongo player, taught him how to play bongos using old condensed milk cans.

When he was young, his family moved to Cerro, a neighborhood in Havana. Cándido's father taught him to play the tres, which is a special type of Cuban guitar. While he focused on the tres, he also learned to play the bass and other percussion instruments. These included the bongo and the conga.

In 1935, at age 14, Cándido started playing the tres professionally. He played in different son music groups. Son is a popular style of Cuban music. The conga drum became more and more popular around this time. Because Cándido couldn't read sheet music, he switched to the conga. It then became his main instrument. However, he also recorded music with other percussion instruments, especially the bongo.

Starting His Career

Early in his career, Cándido played the conga and bongo for a long time at the Cuba radio station. He also played for many years at the famous Tropicana Club. As a tres player, he was part of Chano Pozo's Conjunto Azul band. There, he met Mongo Santamaría, who played bongos at the time.

Cándido first came to New York City on a tour. He then decided to move there in 1946. His first performance in New York was in a musical show called Tidbits. He played at the Plymouth Theatre on Broadway in 1946. He played music for a Cuban dance team named Carmen and Rolando.

How Cándido Changed Music

At the Tidbits show, Cándido did something new. He started playing two conga drums at the same time. Traditionally, in Cuban rumba and carnival music, many drummers would each play just one conga drum. Cándido was the first to develop a way to play different parts by himself on multiple tuned drums. He could play all the parts that a group of drummers would normally play.

He also showed audiences something amazing for the first time. He could play a steady rhythm with one hand while freely making up new rhythms with the other. This was a new technique for conga drums called "coordinated independence." He later used this technique with even more drums. He expanded his setup to three or more congas and added other instruments like the bongo. He even invented a foot-operated cowbell and a guiro that could be attached to his drums.

These new ideas and ways of playing were later used by many other musicians. This led to new equipment being made to help drummers set up more instruments. Cándido was the first to play multiple congas. Soon, other famous drummers like Carlos "Patato" Valdés also started doing it. This became the normal way to play, leading to the standard sets of tuneable congas we see today.

Later Years and Achievements

In 1948, Cándido made his first recording in the U.S. with Machito and His Afro-Cubans. The song was called "El Rey del Mambo." He didn't join their band because they already had a conga player. After Chano Pozo passed away in 1948, Dizzy Gillespie asked Cándido to play with him. They worked together for many years, leading to the famous 1954 album Afro.

Cándido also played with the Billy Taylor Trio and recorded with them in 1953–54. In 1954, he performed and recorded with Stan Kenton. As one of the most well-known conga players in the U.S., Cándido appeared on popular TV shows. These included The Jackie Gleason Show and The Ed Sullivan Show.

Cándido recorded several albums as a band leader for ABC-Paramount in the late 1950s and early 1960s. In the early 1970s, he recorded for Blue Note Records. Later, he joined the dance music company Salsoul. With Salsoul, Cándido recorded two successful albums. These albums are still played by DJs in the U.S. today.

In 1979, he released "Jingo," a popular disco song. It became a huge hit in UK discos and clubs. Many artists have covered the song since then. In the 2000s, Cándido was part of a group called the Conga Kings. He played with Patato and Giovanni Hidalgo. They recorded two albums for Chesky. In 2004, he recorded another album for Chesky called Inolvidable with Graciela. This album was nominated for a Grammy Award. Cándido recorded his last album, The Master, in 2014. He continued to perform in jazz clubs in New York until the late 2010s.

His Passing

Cándido Camero passed away on November 7, 2020, at his home in New York. He was 99 years old.

Awards and Recognition

Cándido's album Inolvidable was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Tropical Latin Album in 2004. He received the National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters Award in 2008. This is a very high honor for jazz musicians. The next year, he received a Latin Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

A documentary film about Cándido called Candido: Hands of Fire was released in 2006.

Discography

As a Leader

• Candido featuring Al Cohn (ABC-Paramount, 1956)
• Calypso Dance Party (ABC-Paramount, 1957)
• The Volcanic (ABC-Paramount, 1957)
• In Indigo (ABC-Paramount, 1958)
• Latin Fire (The Big Beat of Candido) (ABC-Paramount, 1959)
• Conga Soul (Roulette, 1962)
• Candido's Comparsa (ABC-Paramount, 1963)
• Brujerías de Candido / Candido's Latin McGuffa's Dust (Tico Records, 1966)
• Thousand Finger Man (Solid State, 1969, reissued by Blue Note)
• Beautiful (Blue Note, 1970)
• Drum Fever (Polydor, 1973)
• Dancin' and Prancin' (Salsoul, 1979)
• Candy's Funk (Salsoul, 1979)
• The Conga Kings (Chesky, 2000) – with Giovanni Hidalgo and Carlos "Patato" Valdés
• Jazz Descargas (Chesky, 2001) – with Giovanni Hidalgo and Carlos "Patato" Valdés
• Inolvidable (Chesky, 2004) – with Graciela
• Hands of Fire/Manos de fuego (Live) (Latin Jazz USA, 2008)
• The Master (Chesky, 2014)

As a Sideman (Played with Others)

With Gene Ammons

• The Happy Blues (Prestige, 1956)
• The Boss Is Back! (Prestige, 1969)
• Brother Jug! (Prestige, 1969)

With Art Blakey

• Drum Suite (Columbia, 1957)

With Ray Bryant

• Ray Bryant Trio (Epic, 1956)

With Kenny Burrell

• Introducing Kenny Burrell (Blue Note, 1956)

With Duke Ellington

• A Drum Is a Woman (Columbia, 1956)

With Don Elliott

• Jamaica Jazz (ABC-Paramount, 1958)

With Erroll Garner

• Mambo Moves Garner (Mercury, 1954)

With Bennie Green

• Bennie Green Blows His Horn (1955)

With Grant Green

• His Majesty King Funk (1965)

With Dizzy Gillespie

• Afro (Norgran, 1954)
• Gillespiana (Verve, 1960)
• The Melody Lingers On (Limelight, 1966)

With Coleman Hawkins

• The Hawk Talks (Decca, 1952–53 [1955])

With Bobby Hutcherson

• Now! (Blue Note, 1969)

With Illinois Jacquet

• Spectrum (Argo, 1965)

With Jazz at the Philharmonic

• Jazz at the Philharmonic in Europe (Verve, 1963)

With Elvin Jones

• Poly-Currents (Blue Note, 1969)
• Coalition (Blue Note, 1970)
• New Agenda (Vanguard, 1975)

With Wynton Kelly

• It's All Right! (1964)

With Stan Kenton

• Kenton Showcase (Capitol, 1954)

With Benjamin Lapidus

• Ochosi Blues - Latin, Soul, Organ Jazz - Benjamin Lapidus & Kari B3 (2014)

With the Lecuona Cuban Boys

• Dance Along with the Lecuona Cuban Boys (ABC-Paramount, 1959)

With Machito

• Kenya (Roulette, 1958)

With Gary McFarland

• The In Sound (Verve, 1965)

With Ellen McIlwaine

• Honky Tonk Angel (1972)
• We the People (1973)

With Wes Montgomery

• Bumpin' (1965)

With Tito Puente

• Cuban Carnival (RCA, 1956)

With Sonny Rollins

• What's New? (RCA Victor, 1962)

With Bobby Sanabria

• Afro-Cuban Dream: Live & in Clave!!! Bobby Sanabria Big Band (Arabesque, 2000)
• 50 Years of Mambo - A Tribute to Damaso Perez Prado - The Mambo All Stars Orchestra (Mambo Maniacs, 2003)
• Kenya Revisited Live!!! Manhattan School of Music Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra conducted by Bobby Sanabria (Jazzheads, 2008)

With Billy Taylor

• The Billy Taylor Trio with Candido (Prestige, 1955)

With Tico All-Stars

• Descargas at the Village Gate (Tico, 1966)

With Randy Weston

• Uhuru Afrika (Roulette, 1960)
• Tanjah (Polydor, 1973)

See also

In Spanish: Cándido Camero para niños