HUSTLE PAYS OFF FOR SAX MAN RED HOLLOWAY

Red Holloway laughs and says his motto is, “Poverty comes to he who waits.”

So you can be sure that when he’s seeking work as a free-lance jazz saxophonist, the 59-year-old Holloway doesn’t sit tight.

“No, I’m not the type that can wait for a letter to arrive, telling me if I’ve got some work,” he said, laughing. “No, I get on the phone, so the club owner can tell me ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ right then.”

Holloway bases his seek-work operations in the home he shares with his wife, Sylvia, in Carson. He explains his strategy: “First I’ll send a press kit, then a couple of weeks later, I’ll call. Sometimes the club owners don’t bite, but after two to three calls, they’ll usually give me a date. And if they hire me, they’ll usually have me back.”

This type of “hustling,” says Holloway, is paying off. The jocular saxophonist, who self-deprecatingly considers himself “a fair musician and a fair entertainer,” plays successful engagements from Seattle to Copenhagen.

“I do pretty good business, because after 15 years seeing what makes people come out and what makes people stay at home, you know how to entertain them,” says the man who was musical director of L.A.’s now-defunct Parisian Room from 1967-82.

Holloway, who plays Birdland West in Long Beach Friday and Saturday, mixes up his performances. “I usually play some familiar songs, like ‘Stella by Starlight’ or ‘Round Midnight,’ some hit songs that people might know, like ‘What’s New,’ which Linda Ronstadt has done recently.”

The saxophonist, whose latest release is “No Tears for You” on his own label, Red Holloway Records, also sings during his shows. “They’re usually funny songs, like ‘Benny’s From Heaven.”’

But Holloway doesn’t delve into the pop material of today: “I’d rather do something I’m going to be happy with, something I enjoy.”

Though he might not readily acknowledge it, Holloway, when pressed, says his shows are at heart jazz-based. “A lot of times you say ‘jazz,’ people kind of back up, so I more or less try to skirt around the word. But yes, I am a jazz musician, I love to play jazz and that’s my life. I have deviated, playing rock with Lloyd Price and John Mayall, but I was raised on jazz and blues.”

Born in Helena, Ark., Holloway grew up in Chicago, “started tinkling” at the family piano, then took up reeds as a teen-ager. He worked his first professional gig in 1943, with now-local bassist Eugene Wright’s Dukes of Swing, then went on the road for a year with boogie-woogie pianist Roosevelt Sykes, his mother’s friend.

“He came over to our house after I’d gotten out of the Army in 1947,” Holloway recalls, “saw my horn and asked me to play. I started playing with blues and he hired me on the spot. Later I played the blues on records with the Dells, the Spaniels, the El Dorados” and other R & B groups.

After a 2 1/2-year stint with organist Jack McDuff, where his quartet mate was guitarist George Benson, Holloway returned to Chicago, then moved to Los Angeles. His tenure at the Parisian Roo1830839137with, such greats as Carmen McRae, Dizzy Gillespie and Milt Jackson as a “great learning experience.”

“It taught me about the nightclub business. A promoter can tell me how many seats he has and how much he charges, and I can tell how much money he can make. I can also tell, when I look out into the house, how well I did.”

Holloway’s career as a headlining saxophonist was born as a result of a Parisian Room engagement he played with the late Sonny Stitt. “Sonny asked me to make a record, which was ‘Forecast: Sonny and Red,’ and then he asked me to go on the road with him. That helped me get my name around, which really boosted my career.”

The 1977-82 association wasn’t always smooth sailing. Stitt, a renowned alto saxophonist, encouraged Holloway to play the smaller horn with him in tandem. “I didn’t want to--after all, I considered him the world’s greatest alto player,” Holloway, who specialized in tenor sax, said. “But he kept after me, so finally I did.

“And when I got a lot of applause on this one tune, he said to me afterward, ‘Red, we’re friends off the bandstand, but not on the bandstand, so I’m not going to underplay just because of you.’ Here he begs me to play alto and then tells me he’s going to make mincemeat out of me when I do. It was a quite a test for me to play with him and hold my own.”