Biography:

Willis Leonard “Bill” Holman (May 21, 1927 – May 2024)^[1] was an American composer, arranger, conductor, saxophonist, and songwriter working in jazz and traditional pop.^[2] His career spanned over seven decades, starting with the Charlie Barnet orchestra in 1950.

Early life

Bill Holman was born in Olive, California, United States on May 21, 1927.^[3] His family moved to Orange, east of Anaheim, then Santa Ana. He started playing the clarinet in junior high school. While attending Orange High School he played the tenor saxophone and formed a band. Although his family had no musical background, Holman was influenced by Count Basie and Duke Ellington while constantly listening to the radio.^[2][4] He was drafted at the later end of World War II and served in the U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1946. Through the Navy, he studied mechanical engineering at the University of Colorado and then studied at UCLA.

In the late 1940s, he started to concentrate on music instead of engineering. He enrolled at the Westlake College of Music,^[3] and studied with Dave Robertson and Alfred Sendrey. He studied privately with composer and arranger Russ Garcia and Lloyd Reese on the saxophone.^[2] He was influenced by the African-American jazz musicians on Central Avenue in Los Angeles. He heard live music while living nearby and attending Westlake College. He got his first professional start with Ike Carpenter‘s dance band, and then with the Charlie Barnet Orchestra in 1950 as a tenor saxophonist.^[3] He continued with that band for about three years.^[3] Early commercial work as an arranger came in 1951–52 when he wrote charts for band leader and producer Bob Keane for the album, Dancing on the Ceiling.

The Stan Kenton Orchestra

Through his acquaintance with Gene Roland, Holman was auditioned by Stan Kenton and hired as a tenor saxophone player for two years in March 1952 (replacing Bob Cooper).^[5] After working with the band as an instrumentalist, Holman submitted writing to Kenton for the group.^[3] His first writing was not an immediate success with Kenton, until he was given an assignment to write “Invention for Guitar and Trumpet” for Sal Salvador and Maynard Ferguson. The chart was to become one of the recognized works for the Kenton orchestra from the album New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm. It was used in the 1955 movie, Blackboard Jungle.^[6]

Kenton was attracted to Holman’s ability to integrate counterpoint and dissonance in subtle yet distinctive ways, and for his knack for making the Kenton band “swing”.^[3] Holman became one of Kenton’s primary arrangers, creating a signature for the band.^[3] His association with the Kenton orchestra lasted nearly 27 years; he contributed to Kenton’s albums New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm, Contemporary Concepts and the Grammy Award-winning Adventures in Jazz. Kenton featured Holman as a composer and arranger with Bill Russo on the 1954 album Kenton Showcase.

In the course of some intense hanging out (with Gene Roland), I had played a recording of a 12-tone blues that I’d written (doesn’t everybody?) while studying at the Westlake College of Music in Hollywood. According to Gene Roland, who had been writing for Kenton for some time, Stan had been talking about a more contrapuntal, linear type of music, and Gene felt that my piece lay in the direction that Stan was considering. While I was away on a short trip with Charlie Barnet, Gene took the recording to Kenton, and when I returned, Stan called. We met, talked, and he asked me to write a couple of pieces for the band. Being young and ambitious, I reached too far in the writing and exceeded my limits – the charts were disasters and never heard of again – but Stan gamely suggested that I do another. By this time I’d heard some of the things that Gerry Mulligan was bringing in, and with a slightly better idea of what was going on, managed to come back down to earth and brought in a better effort, though it, too, was never heard of again.^[6]

Holman’s comments about being most influenced by the writing of Gerry Mulligan as the template for what was correct for the band:

Gerry wrote eight to ten scores for the band (early 1952, just before he formed the famous quartet) and, while Young Blood, the most linear of these, was the only one to really thrill Stan, the players (by this time I was playing tenor in the band) loved to play and hear all of them. For me particularly, being only about ten charts out of music school and with no real jazz conception of my own, Gerry’s music played a great part in my finding my own voice.^[6]

Classical influences from Béla Bartók were also used during this time. Two of the most important arrangements are on the Kenton album, Contemporary Concepts (1955). Holman talked about his arrangements of “What’s New?” and “I’ve Got You Under My Skin“:

The idea for these two tunes was to write long charts, based on standard tunes, but to make them like an original piece. Just use the changes or a (melodic) fragment to tie it together; in other words, make them like an original – although you don’t get royalties for it! But they were double the length of the usual chart. You could stretch out and do what you want. I remember the day we were all in New York, as part of the ’54 All Star Concert Tour with the Kenton guys plus Shorty Rogers and his Quintet. They were going to continue on but I was going to stay there. I remember Shorty, Jack Montrose and I were walking down 48th Street where all the music stores were. We started looking through some scores and I found Bartok’s Third and Fourth Quartets. I remember after the band left and I finally got down to writing these charts I was looking through the Bartok things and I got an idea for “What’s New”. Sometimes looking at something like that can give you an idea – not necessarily something that’s specifically in there – but just puts something you can use into your head. Just an approach. Stan said to make ’em long and not worry bout keeping the melody going all the time. The standard changes are there so you can follow them if you’re used to listening to jazz that way.^[7]

Zoot Sims joined the group as the solo tenor saxophonist; Kenton asked Holman to write for Sims. Later Holman left the band after an intense discussion about the band’s shortcomings; this did not endanger Holman’s reputation as a composer and arranger for Kenton.^[3] By the mid-1950s, while Holman was in his late 20s, Kenton was commissioning Holman to write as much as he could. He was writing sometimes two charts every week that included concert works, dance charts, originals, and vocals.^[6] During the 1952-55 period the two primary composers/arrangers who shaped the signature sound of the Kenton orchestra for years to come, were Holman and Bill Russo (who was a year younger than Holman). Almost two-thirds of the music recorded by Kenton during this period were from these two writers.^[3] Two of the original works of Holman’s created for the band during that time include “Hav-a-Havana”. The other work which has become the quintessential “Holman signature sound” of contrapuntal composition is “The Opener”. Though Kenton’s taste would evolve and Holman was not functioning as chief arranger by the end of the 1950s, he continued to make key contributions to the Kenton repertoire to 1977 before Kenton’s demise in 1979.

“In sum, it was a pretty high level for an ‘earn-as-you-learn’ case such as mine, but, ill-equipped as I was, Stan’s patience and encouragement and the help of a lot of great players enabled me to make a start in a long and rewarding career. I’ll always be grateful (to Stan) for this, but, what the hell, we both got something out of it.”^[6] Holman also become a participant and clinician of the Stan Kenton Band Clinics as an educational component of the orchestra.

Credits: