Larry Holloway

But in live performance Holloway is the picture of smoothness -- the result of such diligent woodshedding. With his eyes often closed and wearing a wry half-smile, one run through a standard in the vein of "Billie's Bounce" gives ample evidence of Holloway's skills: unfailingly solid half-notes through the head, effortless four-on-the-floor under front line solo flights, and, when it's his turn to blow, agile soloing that features imaginative interval jumps and ferocious double stops.

Holloway's double stops sound meatier than most, and the secret, he freely admits, doesn't lie in his hands alone. In 1991 he met famed bassist Red Mitchell, who in 1966 had pioneered the method of tuning his bass in fifths (C,G,D,A).

A door opened, Holloway said, when he changed to Mitchell's tuning. Despite having 20-plus years of fingering patterns radically altered, Holloway says Mitchell's approach made monumental sense. The bass resonates more with its range extended in both directions, and two-string, root-fifth chords simply rumble.

The connection to Mitchell, who became Holloway's mentor of sorts before Red died in 1992, came full circle earlier this year when Holloway was awarded the first Red Mitchell Memorial Fund Scholarship. Mitchell's widow Diane presented the scholarship at the Willamette University Jazz Festival in Salem, Oregon, at a concert during which Holloway performed several duets with legendary trumpeter Clark Terry.

The national award earned Holloway a mention in Down Beat and effusive praise from Terry, who said, "He's the most deserving person I can think of to receive [the scholarship]....I swear, if you close your eyes and listen, you can hear 'Mitch' right there. So my hat's off to Larry."

During a recent early summer visit to his Bellingham home in Northern Washington, I watched as Holloway lit a citronella candle on his deck table, shooed away his amiable basset hound "Maggie", and put his company at ease while describing his relationship with Mitchell.

"I met Red and Diane in Stockholm in 1991. I was there on tour for two or three weeks," Holloway said. "Red and I had a few mutual friends, so I called him up and introduced myself on the phone. He was about two blocks away, so he said 'Come on over this afternoon'. I said, 'Wow, I just wanted to call and say hi'.

Mitchell was an invaluable source of encouragement, Holloway said, even though most of it came through the phone lines. "Red and Diane were down in Salem [after their move to Oregon]' so I never really took lessons or studied with him. I took lessons on the phone," Holloway said with a chuckle. "I would get discouraged about the new tuning and call him up, saying 'I gotta go back; I can't do this; I can't solo; I'm not going to get hired to do any gigs. Help!' He'd give me ideas, tell me to hang in there, do this and that, keep trying. He was very generous about helping me, and he was that way with everybody."

Mitchell's knowledge and encouragement enabled Holloway (who counted himself as a huge fan of Mitchell's playing before ever meeting him) to prosper in his art. A native of Kansas, Holloway played trumpet and tuba as a youth, picked up string bass during his college years in Emporia, Kansas, and began pursuing his music career in Denver, Colorado. His previous chapter before the Northwest was a 5 year stop in Kansas City.

Holloway's current schedule is filled with recording and performing dates spanning the Interstate-5 corridor. "I've got a lot of jazz dates and some classical things, so I play mostly string bass. I do some electric bass work with the Seattle Symphony for their Pops concerts." Earlier in the summer he worked with Joel Grey and Rita Moreno, who appeared with the Symphony. "Boy, what a world-class organization that Seattle Symphony is! It's such a ball to be sitting in the middle of that group --- just to listen to it. I'm really pretty lucky."