Clint Holmes

1946–

Singer, composer

Casino entertainer Clint Holmes doesn't fit the Las Vegas mold. Whereas many casino headliners put together glitzy, heavily choreographed shows built around their own versions of familiar popular songs, Holmes has used his headliner status to develop original material, including a musical, Comfortable Shoes, based on his own experiences as a biracial American. After a career marked by ups and downs, Holmes has become an icon of Las Vegas entertainment with a long-running engagement as headliner at Harrah's casino. Holmes's musical director at Harrah's, Bill Fayne, has called him "the world's greatest unknown," according to the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Influenced by Jazz and Classical Music

Clinton Holmes was born in Bournemouth, England, on May 9, 1946. His father Eddie, an American GI stationed in England, enjoyed singing jazz, and his mother Audrey was a trained opera singer. Holmes grew up in the small town of Farnham, New York, southwest of Buffalo. As a youth he sang and absorbed musical lessons from both parents, stating on his Web site that "my mom taught me how to sing correctly and my dad taught me how to enjoy it." Outside of music, Holmes had a hard childhood. He was rejected by both white and black classmates, and the father of his planned high school prom date refused to let her attend with him.

Holmes played in rock bands in high school and majored in voice at Fredonia State College (now the State University at Fredonia). Racial prejudice continued to dog him when he visited the family of a college girlfriend. "I flew from Buffalo to Long Island to stay at their house, only to wake up the next morning to hear her mother screaming, 'I didn't send you to college to shack up with a nigger. I want him out of the house,'" he recalled to Mike Weatherford of the Review-Journal. But he did well in school and broke into the music business with a series of gigs in Buffalo nightclubs.

The US Army furthered Holmes's musical training after he was drafted. He played trombone in the Army Band, sang in the Army Chorus, and, at his own request, was picked to sing "Alfie" at a celebration honoring his commanding officer for a promotion. The officer must have been impressed, for Holmes soon received a three-grade promotion to sergeant and joined the Army Chorus in a White House performance. Stationed in Washington, DC, he stayed on in the city after his discharge and landed more nightclub work. During his ten years based in Washington, he married, and he and his wife, Brenda, began raising three children. He began working with a New York agent, and his performing orbit spread up and down the Eastern seaboard. On one occasion he was booked into a club in the Bahamas, where he trotted out a routine in which he impersonated pop star Johnny Mathis. Mathis's producer Paul Vance happened to walk by, heard the routine, and invited Holmes to visit him back on the mainland.

Song Had Second Wind

That meeting resulted in Holmes's recording of "Playground in My Mind," a sweet novelty tune written by Vance and featuring Vance's son, Phillip, on a children's chorus with the words "My name is Michael; I have a nickel." The record was released in June of 1972 and went nowhere. In November, however, a radio programmer in Wichita, Kansas, decided that the song's sentimental mood and background chorus suited it to the holiday season. The song generated heavy phone requests from listeners as it spread across the Midwest and then throughout the country, and an amazed Holmes, who hadn't particularly liked the song, was rushed into a Los Angeles studio to record a Playground in My Mind album. Airplay for the single kept going after the holidays, and it rose to the number two position on Billboard's pop singles chart for the week of June 16, 1973.

Holmes correctly guessed that he hadn't had much to do with the song's success. "'Playground' was an excellently made record, but it could have been almost anybody singing it," he told the Super Seventies Web site. "It didn't have to be me; therefore, it was not a career-making record. It didn't bear the stamp of Clint Holmes. I think that's why, even today, a lot of people remember the song but not the fellow who sang it." Indeed, follow-up singles flopped, and Holmes seemed destined to be branded as a one-hit wonder.

His next chance at the national spotlight came about in 1986, when comedienne Joan Rivers asked him to join her as sidekick on the then-young Fox network's The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers. The show lasted only two years, but that was enough to showcase Holmes in material he felt comfortable with and to sharpen his skills in interacting with other artists. After the show's demise he soon landed a slot as musical feature and events correspondent on the syndicated Entertainment Tonight television program. That lasted another two years, and then, in the early 1990s, Holmes was given a show of his own: he hosted New York at Night on New York's WWOR-TV, serving as both interviewer and performer. The show brought Holmes an Emmy award.

Wrote Autobiographical Musical

Holmes's growing visibility led to several casino residencies in Atlantic City in the 1990s, and he starred in a production of the musical Pal Joey at the Claridge Theater there. His Atlantic City revue Sophisticated Rhythms was an unusually elaborate one, featuring a live five-piece backing Holmes in music ranging from songs of jazz legend Cab Calloway to contemporary material. But Holmes had still bigger ambitions on his mind. By 1995 he had written more than 20 songs for Comfortable Shoes and was looking for backing to bring the show to Broadway. The musical incorporated the scenes of prejudice Holmes had faced as a result of his biracial background. It had a successful premiere in 1996 at the Paper Mill Theater in Milburn, New Jersey, but financing for its New York run fell apart at the last minute. Holmes found himself dealing with unemployment and with the death of his father.

At a Glance …

Born Clinton Holmes on May 9, 1946, in 'Bournemouth, England; son of Eddie Holmes, an American serviceman and jazz singer, and Audrey Holmes, a British opera singer; married Brenda; children: Brent, Brittany, Cooper. Education: Attended Fredonia State College, Fredonia, NY. Military service: US Army, mid-1960s; performed in Army choirs and bands.

Career: Singer and composer, mid-1960s-; moved to Washington, DC, after military discharge and performed in Eastern states, 1970s; The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, cast member, 1986; Entertainment Tonight, correspondent, late 1980s; New York at Night (television program), host, early 1990s; Atlantic city casinos, later 1990s; Las Vegas, performer, 1999–.

Selected awards: Emmy award, for New York at Night; Buffalo, NY, Musical Hall of Fame; Casino Legends Hall of Fame; Best Singer in Las Vegas award.

Addresses: Office—Harrah's Las Vegas, 3475 Las Vegas Blvd South, Las Vegas, NV 89109; Web—www. clintholmes.com.

An offer to star in a revue at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas helped turn things around for Holmes, who moved to the fabled capital of gambling and nightlife in 1999. The musical atmosphere of Las Vegas proved to be a congenial one for Holmes, who received crucial encouragement from star comedian Bill Cosby when the two worked together early in Holmes's Vegas career. Holmes was tabbed by the city's convention bureau to write a Las Vegas theme song, "L.V.," as a counterpart to such markers of urban identity as "Chicago" and "New York, New York." The song gained a measure of familiarity as it began to be used in the city's massive New Year's Eve celebrations, and Holmes moved on to a headliner slot at the giant Harrah's casino.

Holmes did not give up on Comfortable Shoes, and the show was given a full production in 2002 in Chicago, with former Broadway Lion King lead Christopher Jackson in the role of Holmes. A review quoted in the Las Vegas Review-Journal took the position that Comfortable Shoes had noble intentions but "needs a lot more work for a national future." Undaunted, Holmes began to incorporate his own music into his Vegas shows, and in the process he began to develop a product that became more and more distinctive. The Review-Journal's Weatherford praised Holmes's "risk-taking" performances, noting that "at least a third of the show consists of original songs by Holmes and his musical collaborators. This is tricky but crucial, if Holmes wants to showcase his distinct musical heritage." The show included numbers from Comfortable Shoes, and by the mid-2000s he was a Las Vegas fixture, bouncing back from a bout with colon cancer in 2004. Among other honors, the main theater at Harrah's was renamed the Clint Holmes Theater.

Selected works

Albums

Playground in My Mind, Epic, 1973.
Edges, Valley Vue, 1997.
Clint Holmes Live, 2001.
If Not Now When, 2005.

Plays

Comfortable Shoes (musical), 2002.

Sources

Periodicals

Jet, August 1, 1994, p. 35.

Knight Ridder/Tribune News Service, July 21, 1995.

Las Vegas Review-Journal, October 6, 2002, p. J1; April 11, 2003, p. J4; December 24, 2004, p. A3, J4.

Record (Bergen County, NJ), April 5, 2002, p. 37.

Star-Ledger (Newark, NJ), September 15, 1996, p. 5.

On-line

Clint Holmes, www.clintholmes.com (May 2, 2006).

"Clint Holmes Biography & News," Harrah's Las Vegas, www.harrahs.com (March 24, 2006).

"'Playground in My Mind': Clint Holmes," Super Seventies, www.superseventies.com/1973_8singles.html (March 24, 2006).