Big Band Anomaly Still Thrives : Music: Bill Holman, who once considered himself the ‘common man’s jazz writer,’ is playing out his good fortune on the charts.

Bill Holman is an anomaly.

In an era when big bands are hanging on by their nails, and big-band composers and arrangers with them, Holman continues to thrive.

In fact, he’s on the top of the charts.

Well, actually it’s Natalie Cole’s “Unforgettable” that currently is the No. 1 album on both Billboard magazine’s pop and jazz charts. But Holman, the 64-year-old Grammy winner and Orange County native, crafted six arrangements for the singer--among them “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” and “Avalon.”

And there’s more. He is in the midst of writing an hour’s worth of originals and arrangements of standards for the West German Radio Network big band, to be performed in Cologne in November. Additionally, this year he has arranged a couple of selections for Doc Severinsen’s “Tonight Show” Orchestra, and orchestrated and recorded six tunes for a soon-to-be-released album featuring vibist Charlie Shoemake and singer Sandi Shoemake.

Holman--who leads his large ensemble tonight at the Hyatt Newporter in Newport Beach, and Sunday at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art--is an artist blessed with good fortune: He makes a “comfortable living” doing what he really wants to do--compose and arrange for jazz orchestra.

He hasn’t always.

There was a period in the early ‘60s when Holman--who first established himself in the early ‘50s with classy pieces for Stan Kenton--was drinking a lot and working very little.

“The word had gotten out that I was loaded all the time and couldn’t be trusted, either musically or emotionally,” he says with typical candor in a recent interview. (Holman said he hasn’t had a drink since 1975, the year he formed his current band.)

Then in the mid- to late ‘60s, Holman did a stint of commercial writing for pop vocalists, including Diana Ross, the Fifth Dimension and the Association. “I was a businessman. I was into music the way so many people are in this town--for the money only,” he said.

He won’t deny that that period had its rewards.

“Those years of commercial writing bought me my house,” he said, referring to his attractive Hollywood Hills home. “And during that period jazz was barely hanging in, so I was grateful to have work that paid well. And to be wanted by anybody during that drinking period was kind of a kick.”

These days, the assignments are much more to his liking, such as the Natalie Cole album, a tribute to the singer’s famous father, singer-pianist Nat (King) Cole.

A call from Andre Fischer, Cole’s husband and producer of several cuts on the album, led to Holman writing most of the set’s big-band tracks. The collection also includes several string arrangements, by such notables as Johnny Mandel, Michel LeGrand and Marty Paich.

“Andre, for whom I’d worked on an album by singer Diane Schuur, came over to the house and brought some of (Nat Cole’s) records for me to hear,” Holman says. “I had varying degrees of freedom, though the original concept was to do the tunes in much the same groove as Nat had done them.”

The sessions were recorded in June, with Holman conducting, in Studio A of Capitol Records’ Vine Street tower in Hollywood. It was the studio where, in 1960, Holman recorded one of four records that document his ensembles, “Bill Holman’s Great Big Band.”

Natalie Cole was a pleasure, said the writer whose most recent release is “The Bill Holman Band.”

“It was great,” Holman said. “She’s a real performer. There were no hassles, she was willing to discuss the music, was very friendly. . . . She’s a very good singer and I really became a fan.”

Holman says he’s “tickled” about the album’s success, though he points out that the tunes “that define the album are the string charts.” String orchestral backgrounds are heard on such songs as “Lush Life,” “Nature Boy” and “Mona Lisa.”

Is Holman jealous? Does he wish he’d been given one of those succulent assignments?

“Yeah, but not at the expense of any charts by (Mandel or LeGrand),” he said quickly.

Holman, who also plays tenor saxophone, might have made a more lucrative living writing for film or television--like Mandel, his ‘50s Los Angeles jazz scene sidekick who was then known mainly as a trombonist.

Though Holman occasionally has orchestrated film scores--including “Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life is Calling” and “The Marrying Man”--he resolved long ago not to pursue soundtrack writing as a career.

“I decided not to go after (film) work where you write a little Mozart, a little Gay ‘90s, some rock ‘n’ roll here,” he said. “Instead I stuck with my music. I just wanted to see how it would develop.”

Holman was born in Olive and moved at age 3 to Santa Ana, where he began concocting big-band arrangements while attending Santa Ana High School. He contributed his first major works as a member of Stan Kenton’s orchestra in 1953, and then went on to write for most of the top jazz big bands, including Count Basie, Woody Herman, Buddy Rich and Severinsen. It was his arrangement for Severinsen of Billy Strayhorn’s “Take the ‘A’ Train” that garnered him a 1987 Grammy for best instrumental arrangement.

A barometer of just how much Holman’s music--whose work bears influences ranging from Charles Mingus to Charles Ives and which swings distinctively--has evolved is his own view of it.

“I used to think my music was very simple,” he said, chuckling. “I thought of myself as the common man’s jazz writer.”

“I know different now,” he said. “The music is much more complex. I wish it weren’t. Maybe it would be a lot more understandable to a lot more people. But that’s the direction it took--I’m often seeking to do something I haven’t heard before--and I’m stuck with it. I wish I could get the same musical message across in simpler terms, say, three notes instead of 10, but I don’t know how.”

Difficult music requires regular rehearsal, Holman said. So he gathers his men together every Thursday at the Musicians Union building on Vine Street in Hollywood to run over the material. It’s an act that, like the music Holman writes, sets him apart from many other musicians and composers.

“To take three precious hours and rehearse a band at the funky union would be, for most people, an admission that things were not going well (financially),” he says. “But to be doing it on a steady basis for years, most people wouldn’t even like to admit they had that much time to spare.

Holman makes the time. “Gigs are great,” he says, “but the music is why people become musicians in the first place, and we’re supposed to take every chance to play good music.”

The Bill Holman Orchestra will play tonight at 7:30 at the Hyatt Newporter, 1107 Jamboree Road, Newport Beach. Admission: $6 to $7. Information: (714) 729-1234.