Bill Holman

Born: May 21

Born Willis Leonard Holman on May 21, 1927 in Olive, CA, near Santa Ana, Bill Holman took up clarinet in junior high school and tenor saxophone in high school by which time he was leading his own band. After serving in the Navy and studying engineering, he decided in the late '40s that he wanted to write big band music and studied for a while at the Westlake College of Music in Los Angeles with Dave Robertson and Dr. Alfred Sendrey. He also studied composition privately with Russ Garcia and saxaphone with Lloyd Reese.

In 1949 he played with the Ike Carpenter Band, in 1951, he was writing for Charlie Barnet, and in 1952 he began his association with Stan Kenton, for whom he wrote and played for many years. During the '50s, he was also active in the West Coast jazz movement, playing in small bands led by Shorty Rogers and Shelly Manne, and co-leading a quintet with Mel Lewis in 1958.

The Pete McGuinness Jazz Orchestra: Mixed Bag

by Jack Bowers
June 4, 2025

Award-winning arranger Pete McGuinness has chosen to name the fourth recording by his stellar New York-based Jazz Orchestra Mixed Bag, a term whose meaning may be construed as positive or less so, depending on the context. As he explains in the album's liner notes, McGuinness accentuates the positive, writing that to him, “Variety has always been ...

Terry Gibbs Dream Band: Dream Band, Vol. 7: The Lost Tapes, 1959

by Angelo Leonardi
February 24, 2025

?Non credo che ci sia mai stata una band migliore di questa, compresa la mia?. Mel Lewis espresse queste parole per la mitica orchestra che il vibrafonista Terry Gibbs guid�� in California tra il 1959 e il 1961 e fu chiamata “Dream Band" per l'entusiasmo che suscit�� tra i fortunati che l'ascoltarono dal vivo.

Cassio Vianna Jazz Orchestra: Vida

by Jack Bowers
January 2, 2025

As you can't always describe a book by its cover, neither can you invariably pinpoint with accuracy a jazz ensemble's locale by its name alone. The Cassio Vianna Jazz Orchestra, to choose a random example, is not from Italy--nor from anywhere else in Europe. Although born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Cassio Vianna has lived in ...

Dream Band, Vol. 7: The Lost Tapes, 1959

By Terry Gibbs

Label: Whaling City Sound
Released: 2024
Track listing: Begin the Beguine; Back Bay Shuffle; It Might as Well Be Swing; My Reverie; After You'Ve Gone; I'M Getting Sentimental Over You; The Song Is You; Softly as in a Morning Sunrise; Moonglow; Don't Be That Way; Opus One; Prelude to a Kiss; Bright Eyes; Dancing in the Dark; Cottontail; Let's Dance; No Heat; Flying Home.

Carmen McRae, Quincy Jones, Black & White Sessions

by David Brown
November 12, 2024

This week, Duke Ellington works as interpreted by Franz Koglmann / Lee Konitz, Della Reese and then Etta Jones with the Cyril Haynes Quartet. The Jones tune comes from a Mosaic Box Set reissuing works recorded for the short-lived label Black & White Records. We'll hear two more tracks from that box, from Ivie Anderson and ...

Terry Gibbs: Dream Band, Vol. 7: The Lost Tapes, 1959

by Jack Bowers
November 1, 2024

In 1959, vibraphonist Terry Gibbs and his recently formed big band set up shop at the Seville, a Los Angeles nightclub owned by Harry Schiller. Many of those early sessions were taped, at Gibbs' request, by famed recording engineer Wally Heider before being left on a shelf and forgotten. After two weeks at the Seville, Gibbs ...

Terry Gibbs: Dream Band, Vol. 7: The Lost Tapes, 1959

by Richard J Salvucci
October 13, 2024

Someone once asked Terry Gibbs how it was possible that if you took his side men, or some subset of them, and put them together in another band, they never quite sounded as good. Gibbs replied, modestly, that it was all in the arrangers. He got the best arrangers, like Bill Holman, Marty Paich and Med ...

17 Favorite 1950s Clips by Bill Holman

May 9, 2024

As an arranger, the late Bill Holman} knew how to set 'em up and knock 'em down. His arrangements always began with a relatively simple melodic idea, which he then whipped up into a flaming meringue, holding dear to the original concept. He loved to put the reeds in play, setting them off with call-and-response harmony ...

Shelly Manne & His Men: Jazz From The Pacific Northwest

by Pierre Giroux
April 11, 2024

Shelly Manne & His Men are presented in two iterations in never-before-released live recordings from the 1958 Monterey Jazz Festival and from a 1966 date at The Penthouse in Seattle entitled Jazz From The Pacific Northwest. In this deluxe limited edition 180-gram 2LP set, co-produced for release by the estimable Zev Feldman and Cory Weeds, the ...