have you ever seen CANDIDO in concert

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

seeing Candido this week was a dream come true. unfortunately i know very little about him outside of his recordings, has anyone here on the board ever seen him live in concert, id espicaly be interested to hear from people who saw him in the 60s, 70s, or 80s. probably aronud the nyc area? what were his concerts like back then?

[mikeweil]

Closest I came was a live broadcast from the Berlin Jazz Festival - Herbie Mann's band was stuck at some airport, and when he found out Candido was around he asked him to play duo, which was wonderful, totally improvised. They should release a DVD of this. Of course this is in no way representative of what he played with his own band. I have to admit I like his sidemen dates much better than his albums as a leader ...too many pop tunes in rather bland arrangements.

p.s. it was a tv broadcast, btw - there are lots of treasures in the vaults of Berlin tv stations as they recorded every minute of the Berlin Jazz Fest.

Edited November 25, 2012 by mikeweil

[Hardbopjazz]

Yes I've seen him a number of times. Once with Randy Weston.

[sheldonm]

Yes, saw and photographed him a few years back in LA.

[Michael Weiss]

Saw him at the Monk percussion competition in 2000. IIRC he was one of the judges.

[david weiss]

When I first moved to New York, to make ends meet, I played in a few wedding bands.

One such band featured Candido and they would do a big Latin medley featuring his many talents. That 10-15 minutes was a lot of fun. The rest of the gig sucked as usual and Candido would lightly tap on the congas for the rest of the night. Nice guy......

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

wow, really candido was doing a lot of private gigs n stuff? when was this, the 80s?

When I first moved to New York, to make ends meet, I played in a few wedding bands.

One such band featured Candido and they would do a big Latin medley featuring his many talents. That 10-15 minutes was a lot of fun. The rest of the gig sucked as usual and Candido would lightly tap on the congas for the rest of the night. Nice guy......

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

hey mr weiss i was thinkin about what said re: hed do his bit then tap the congas lightly the rest of the night,

and well that was kind of like the show i saw, the band openned up the show with 2-3 numbers then introduce candido, and hed only play every 3rd song in the show, and otherwise hed just be sitting there and on one tune while he was sitting he rocked the cowbell (in absolute perfect time, i might add), anyways the difference is CANDIDO IS 91 NOW. so i was just thinking of that when i read you said that....

what was candido like, to you, was he working a lot at that time. was this the 1980s? i cant seen to find any recordings or anything at all regarding candido in the 80s. where is dancin n prancin part 2/ d&p 1985?

so your goal was always to have your own ensemble or play the most modern jazz and you did the latin gig to make ends meet?

[david weiss]

late '80's or early '90's I think......

There wasn't a lot of time to chat on these gigs so I didn't really get to talk to him. It was a long time ago but I remember thinking a lot of the guys in the band were not so nice and kind of disrespectful to him.

Those gigs didn't bring out the best in people though......

Like most wedding bands, it was essentially a Top 40 band that had the skills to a little bit of everything. Candido would of course be featured when they did their Latin medley.

I was sub in the band but I got the impression that this was a pretty steady gig for Candido. It was the top band in this particular (wedding band) office and those bands usually work a lot.

I'm not sure I had very specific goals when I moved to New York. I think I just wanted to play as often as possible in the best possible situations.

I did have to pay the rent though so the first thing I learned when I got here was about the abundance of all sorts of other types of gigs one could do to make ends meet.

So I did wedding bands, all types of Latin gigs, Haitian gigs, Soca bands, big bands (including a ghost big band or two), a cruise ship once, a parade or two and so on and so on......

Some of these were really awful of course.....

I was also going to jam sessions almost every night as well and certainly would go to one after the wedding gigs to get that stink off of me.

Eventually I got more calls to do what I came here to do and at some point began formulating my own ideas for my own bands and took off running from there.

Some of these other gigs were a lot of fun and a good experience and even a little educational.

I got to play with some of the top Salsa bands in New York and they were great. Some of the Soca gigs were really cool and the Haitian Kompa bands were great as well.

[chewy-chew-chew-bean-benitez]

seeing Candido last month changed my life. it was one of the most profound concert experieces ive ever had. sonically. i have never heard music, the way i heard it at the candido concert (both nights). candidos congas were mixed way more upfront than on the old abc-paramount albums, when he was playing he sounded fantastic. candido remembers the last time he played here. with stan kenton orch, at the civic auditorium, in 1953. he told the audience he remembers it like it was yesterday.