Clint Holmes must be the only Cafe Carlyle headliner who owes his show-business career to Gen. William C. Westmoreland.
The commander of US military operations in Vietnam saw the United States Army Chorus perform in 1968, and noticed that everyone in it was white. Soon after, Holmes — a half-black trombone player in an Army band — wound up singing with the chorus at the White House.
Since then, his career’s been nothing less than eclectic. Along with a No. 2 pop hit, 1973’s “Playground in My Mind” (“My name is Michael, I got a nickel/I got a nickel, shiny and new”), he opened for nightclub headliners like Bill Cosby, Don Rickles and Joan Rivers, and was even Rivers’ sidekick on her short-lived Fox show. Later, he had his own Emmy-winning talk/variety show on WOR, and is so big in Vegas, Harrah’s renamed its main showroom for him.
All in all, it’s a nice warm-up for New York, where Holmes kicks off a three-week run at the Carlyle tonight with “This Thing Called Love,” a mix of love songs by Cole Porter and Paul Simon. It’s a return engagement at the venue, where his Bobby Short tribute show last year won rave reviews.
“Most of the cabaret I’ve seen that I’ve really liked has been thematic,” Holmes says. “There has to be some meat on the bone.”
The idea for the show is simple: “Porter and Simon walk into a bar. They sit down, Porter sips his martini, Simon sips his beer and they talk about the great love songs they’ve written.”
Those songs include Porter’s “At Long Last Love,” “So in Love,” “I Concentrate on You” and Simon’s “Loves Me Like a Rock,” “I Do It For Your Love” and “Slip Sliding Away.”
And while the composers’ backgrounds and styles couldn’t be more dissimilar, Holmes says, you’d be surprised to hear how easily “Get Out of Town” segues into “50 Ways To Leave Your Lover.”
“I wanted to call the show ‘It’s Delightful, It’s Delicious, It’s Depressing,’ ” he says, laughing.
Though he’s been a fan of Simon “forever and forever,” Holmes has yet to meet him. “They’re inviting him, but who knows?” he says. “It would be both nerve-racking and a thrill to have him there.”
The 65-year-old comes by his talents naturally: His African-American father was a jazz singer, and his white English mother sang opera. The couple met at a USO show in England during World War II, and wed soon after. Even Holmes isn’t sure where.
“There were 17 states here that they could not have been legally married in,” he points out.
Both parents influenced his performing style. “My mother taught me correct vocal techniques, and my father wanted me to be cool,” he says.
Their story is told in the musical “Comfortable Shoes,” which Holmes co-wrote and starred in at New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse in 1996, and which later played Chicago’s Royal George Theatre.
The show, which he hopes will come to Broadway one day, has been retitled “Just Another Man.”
“Fifteen years have happened,” he says. “I had colon cancer, I remarried, my father passed away. All that and many other things occurred. So since the show is autobiographical, it had to change.”
And if his New York cabaret career continues to take off, it may have to change yet again.