A Sad Farewell to Rodney Holmes
- Bill Milkowski
- Jul 19
- 2 min read
The great drummer and radiant personality passed on Saturday at age 60
The profoundly sad news about Rodney Holmes’ recent passing last week began rolling in on Facebook in the many testimonials of those who played with him and knew him for decades — Randy Brecker, George Colligan, Will Lee, George Whitty, Dave Weckl, David Gilmore, Chieli Minucci, Ed Maguire and others — all attesting to his formidable chops, his kind and sweet demeanor underscored by a bad-ass power-precision presence on the kit.
A short, handsome man with a gentle voice, an infectious smile (which he rarely flashed for photos) and a quick sense of humor, Holmes was a regular at the 55 Bar, where I saw him play with Leni Stern, Mike Stern, Wayne Krantz, The Hermanators with Mitch Stein and a host of other New York notables. He anchored several favorite albums of mine in the late ‘80s and ‘90s, including Jean-Paul Bourelly’s Trippin’, Victor Bailey’s Bottom’s Up, Leni Stern’s Ten Songs, Bob Belden’s When Doves Cry: The Music of Prince, The Brecker Brothers’ Out of the Loop, Michal Urbaniak’s Urbanator II, Jane Getter’s Jane, and David Gilmore’s Ritualism.
Holmes eventually went on some major international tours — with Special EFX in 1991, the Zawinul Syndicate in 1992, Santana in 1993, The Brecker Brothers in 1994, Wayne Shorter in 1996. I caught Rodney in concert with Wayne’s band (James Beard on keyboards, David Gilmore on guitar, Alphonso Johnson on bass) at the Montreal Jazz Festival (later documented on a great DVD released in 2009 by Eagle Eye Media).
And here’s that same quintet with Rodney Holmes from Lugano, Switzerland in 1995:
Rodney would later tour and record with The Brecker Brothers Band Reunion, led by trumpeter Randy Brecker and featuring his wife Ada Rovatti filling the large shoes of Michael Brecker on tenor sax.
The Bronx-born Holmes sadly succumbed to cancer on Saturday, July 11th. I interviewed Rodney for an “Up & Coming” piece in the December 1993 issue of Modern Drummer, just as he was about the join Santana:
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