Candido

Internationally celebrated as the man who essentially picked up where Chano Pozo left off, Candido Camero was among the most ubiquitous of the Cuban and Caribbean percussionists who enlivened and enriched the musical landscape of North America during the second half of the 20th century. Among the first to popularize the use of multiple conga drums and one of the inadvertent instigators of the bongo craze of the 1950s, he outlived most of his contemporaries and was still performing with extraordinary passion and precision well after attaining the status of an octogenarian. Candido de Guerra Camero was born in the El Cerro barrio of San Antonio de los Baños in Havana, Cuba, on April 22, 1921. As a young boy he played the string bass. After operating a tres guitar with Conjunto Gloria Habanera at the age of 14, he began to concentrate on the bongos, and had soon graduated to the conga. In addition to the Pan African combination of Yoruba, Portuguese, and Spanish folk influences, Candido named U.S. jazz drummers Max Roach and Kenny Clarke as primary inspirations. He recorded with various Cuban bandleaders including Machito, worked for six years in the house band at radio station CMQ in Havana, and performed at the Tropicana club there as a member of Armando Romeu's orquesta from 1947 to 1952. The North American chapter of his career began in October of 1952 and was inaugurated with a six-week engagement at the Clover Club in Miami, followed by a move to New York suggested by his new friend, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, who personally took him to the Downbeat Club to sit in with pianist Billy Taylor. During 1953 and 1954 he recorded with Taylor's trio as well as with Erroll Garner, assisted Gillespie in the realization of "Manteca Suite" (the first of many recorded...