Ron Holloway: Sax to the Max

I REMEMBER seeing saxophonist Ron Holloway sitting in with the Skip Castro Band at the old Columbia Station in Adams-Morgan 20 years ago. And I remember Holloway playing in the late crazyman Root Boy Slim's band 15 years ago at Desperados in Georgetown. And I remember catching Holloway a few years ago at Blues Alley as part of Dizzy Gillespie's band.

There were many other Holloway sightings over the years in clubs around town, sometimes deliberate, sometimes pleasantly accidental (like wandering into Cafe Lautrec and finding his combo tearing the house down, unadvertised). Each time I've heard Holloway play, I've thought to myself how lucky Washington is that this virtuoso saxman lives and works here.

There's now one more reason to call ourselves lucky, and that's the release of Holloway's fourth CD on the major jazz label Milestone. Aperformance to celebrate the release of "Groove Update" is being held Wednesday at Blues Alley (1041 Wisconsin Ave. rear; 202/337-4141). Look for the 44-year-old tenor player to push himself harder than ever. "If we're playing something off the record, I want it to be more than the record, something newer and better," Holloway says. "Because it's like a quest. When I'm up there playing, of course I'm playing for the audience, but at the same time I'm challenging myself, definitely trying to outdo myself." From the day he picked up the sax in junior high at age 13 -- almost on a dare from his friends -- to the present, Holloway has embraced the path of the true musician. "The first time I picked up the sax and practiced, I played for three hours. I instinctively knew I was on some meaningful path." Inspired by his father's vast collection of jazz records, Holloway listened and absorbed, practiced and practiced, and most importantly, he says, performed with other musicians whenever he could. "Beginning in the early '70s, I was going around sitting in with all types of bands, learning whatever I could," says Holloway. He played everything: jazz, funk, R&B, rock, blues. "I was unknowingly doing something that's always been part of the jazz tradition, and that's learning from your betters, finding the teachers, being humble but willing to put in the time and effort." His desire to sit in led him to be-bop legend Dizzy Gillespie's dressing room at the old Showboat in Silver Spring in 1977. He played with Dizzy then, and whenever the trumpeter came through town Holloway joined him on stage. Finally, in 1989 Dizzy hired him full time, and Holloway played with him until Gillespie's death in 1993. Now that Holloway is concentrating on leading his own band, he's happy to play a mentoring role for younger players. "I let people sit in all the time, but I don't think of it as if it's something I ought to do," he says. "I just do it. If somebody has enough courage or desire to approach me and is willing to jump right in the water, then I'm curious how they sound." As far as long-range plans go, Holloway doesn't look too far ahead. He says he's happy with his life, playing area clubs on a regular basis, putting out a record on Milestone every couple of years, and absorbing the world around him so he can keep turning it into art. "As long as I'm working on my craft and I can notice a development in myself, then I'm quite satisfied. Fortunately, I do still notice these things happening, my music improving. And as long as these things are happening, the other things in life will fall in place."

Copyright 1998 The Washington Post