Frank Holder, Guyanan jazz singer and percussionist – obituary
Frank Holder, the singer and percussionist, who has died aged 92, played an active and versatile part in Britain’s jazz and entertainment worlds for more than 70 years.
A man of enormous energy and unquenchable optimism, he mastered many aspects of show business but always retained his youthful devotion to jazz.
Frank Claude Holder was born in Georgetown, British Guiana (now Guyana), on April 2 1925. As a teenager he listened to jazz on American radio and sang occasionally with local bands. In 1944 he volunteered to join the RAF and sailed to Britain aboard a Royal Navy convoy. Once enlisted, he found himself at a camp in Wiltshire with nothing to do, and set about finding service dance bands to sing with. He also taught himself to play the drums, and took up boxing on the side.
Released from the service after the war, Holder resolved to stay in Britain and make a career for himself in music. In 1946 he joined the band led by the West Indian trumpeter Leslie “Jiver” Hutchinson, which made his name known among the small but growing jazz audience.
He immersed himself in bebop, the new and complex style of jazz from America, took part in jam sessions and performed at the Feldman Club, one of London’s few jazz venues. This brought him the knowledgeable approval of musicians, which was how, in 1950, he came to the attention of the leader of the Johnny Dankworth Seven, the country’s most prominent modern jazz group, as he recalled: “One day he just came up to me and said, ‘You’re Frank Holder. The boys tell me you’re good. I want you to join my band.’ I was dumbstruck.”
It was the start of six years with the Seven and its successor, the Dankworth Orchestra, and of a lifelong friendship. One of Holder’s early tasks was to help audition the band’s new singer, the young and totally inexperienced Cleo Laine. Having enthusiastically agreed that she should have the job (at £7 a week), he took it upon himself to be her mentor.
She never forgot it. Writing to him on his 90th birthday, Dame Cleo Laine wrote: “You taught me how to walk the fine line between making contact with an audience and keeping your integrity as a singer with a jazz group.”
While with Dankworth, Holder made a speciality of playing Latin-American hand drums, the conga and the bongos. He had perfected a solo feature to perform during the band’s set and, in 1956, felt it was time to launch himself as a solo artist.
As well as touring with leading jazz players, such as Tubby Hayes, Ronnie Scott and Joe Harriott, he performed in cabaret and on the variety stage, with, among others, Shirley Bassey and Tommy Cooper. He even opened the show for Bill Haley and the Comets at the height of the first, riotous rock ’n’ roll craze – making sure that his bongos were well insured, as the Melody Maker reported.
In those years, Holder’s show business life took him around the country and frequently abroad, but he never entirely vanished from the British jazz scene and was often to be seen and heard during gala events at the Dankworths’ concert venue, The Stables at Wavendon.
He did not, however, make many recordings during the busiest part of his career, and those he did seem mostly to be out of print. Fortunately, he made up for this in his late maturity. He recorded the excellent Samba, Samba with the Latin-jazz group, Paz, in 1997, Born To Swing in 2006, and Ballads, Blues and Bop in 2009. It is difficult to believe that these last two are the work of a man of more than 80.
Frank Holder received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Worshipful Company of Musicians in 2015.
He is survived by his wife, Irene, a son and two daughters.
Frank Holder, born April 2 1925, died October 29 2017