04 June 2024

Bob Rogers | Bill Holman Sax & Arranger for the Kenton Sound – Phantom Dancer

Phantom Dancer Radio Show

Bob Rogers, Australian radio legend, died this week aged 97 after almost 80 years of radio and TV broadcasting. Your Phantom Dancer feature this week is arranger Bill Holman who also died in his 90s in May 2024. He was the arranger who created the definitive Stan Kenton progressive jazz sound in the early 1950s and continued in music till this year.

The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.

LISTEN to this week’s Phantom Dancer mix (online after 2pm AEST, Tuesday 4 June) and weeks of Phantom Dancer mixes online at, at https://2ser.com/phantom-dancer/

BOB ROGERS

Bob Rogers was an Australian disc jockey and radio broadcaster. He was noted for introducing Top 40 radio  to Australia in 1958, on 2UE, Sydney.

Rogers began his career as a panel operator for 3XY in Melbourne in 1942. He the was on-air six days a week as an announcer on 7HO Hobart, including presenting racing on Saturdays.

His DJ career started when he was given permission to start a Sunday afternoon music program, playing new records given to him by American sailors.

Rogers resigned in a pay dispute and took his music show to 4BH Brisbane in 1950.

In 1957, Rogers discovered the Slim Dusty song Pub With No Beer and was the first DJ in Australia to play the song and bring it to number one on the charts.

Bob Rogers presented Australia’s first Top 40 show on 2UE Sydney from 1958 to 1962.

For the next 8 years, Rogers was Australia’s top radio DJ.

He hosted a television talk show on TCN-9 Sydney, and then on ATN-7 Sydney from 1969 – 73.

In 1962 Rogers joined 2SM Sydney as one of the “Good Guys”. 2SM jumped in the ratings to number 1.

In 1964 Rogers was chosen to represent 2SM on The Beatles’ tour through Europe, Asia and Australia. He became known as The Fifth Beatle.

Rogers returned to 2UE and in 1976 he wrote ‘Rock And Roll Australia’, a book about the birth of the Australian rock industry.

In 1982, he started a chain of women’s dress shops.

In October 1976, Rogers joined 2GB Sydney.  While compering the 2GB morning program, in June 1977, Rogers was sacked, after he failed to use the seven-second-delay button, during an on-air conversation with John Singleton. Singleton’s use of a ‘four-letter word’ was broadcast.

In November 1995, Rogers accepted John Singleton’s offer to join Sydney radio station 2CH. On 21 February 2007, according to the Nielsen radio ratings survey, Bob Rogers’ Morning show became the fourth most heard radio programme in Sydney.

Rogers was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the 2010 Birthday Honours for “service to the media as a radio broadcaster”.

After suffering a stroke while on air in 2018, Rogers announced in November 2018 that he would stop presenting his morning programme. He continued presenting his ‘Reminiscing’ program on Saturdays until 3 October 2020.

A lo-fi aircheck of myself with Bob Rogers on 2CH talking about one of me 1920s-30s band albums:

BILL HOLMAN

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.

After working with the band as an instrumentalist, Holman submitted writing to Kenton for the group.

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’.

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”.

Holman became one of Kenton’s primary arrangers, creating a signature for the band.

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.”

“Gerry Mulligan 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.”

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.”

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.

By the mid-1950s, when 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. 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. 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 death in 1979.

Bill Holman arranging and conducting big band age 95: