Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Holloway, a Strip veteran, returns

After more than 20 years of entertaining fans in Las Vegas lounges, popular jazz singer Loretta Holloway returned to her South Carolina roots in the late 1990s to take care of her ailing parents.

"It was a big move," Holloway recalled in a telephone interview from her home in Belton, S.C. "I came back to the squirrels."

Belton is a town of about 4,400 residents, and an unknown number of squirrels, located 25 miles southwest of Greenville, population 56,000.

"I had grown weary of Las Vegas and all the changes," Holloway said. "And when my parents were ailing, I knew I had to come back and help them."

Her mother, Georgia, died in 1998. Her father, Luther, died in 2000.

Although Holloway has made a few guest appearances at charitable and other events in Las Vegas since leaving town, she has not performed a full-fledged show here since an engagement at the Las Vegas Hilton in 1999.

That will change next week, when she showcases her considerable talents with a performance at 8 p.m. Thursday at Turnberry Place's Stirling Club. Admission is $25 (which includes strawberries and champagne). For information, call 784-4601.

She will perform a second show at 9 p.m. Sunday at the Bootlegger. There is no cover charge, but reservations are required. For information, call 736-4939.

"I have people helping me put my show together," Holloway said. "It's going to be music of substance, songs with lyrics and verses."

Holloway is checking out the scene to see whether she might like to spend more time here performing.

"I would do it if it was the right situation," she said. "There's so much topless stuff out there now, and there's only so much of that people can take - people want to hear substance."

After being raised in Belton, where her father was a fourth-generation owner of a funeral home business, Holloway lived in Chicago for a year and then moved to Los Angeles in the mid-'70s, where she performed in jazz clubs and did commercials.

Her first experience with Vegas came when she was signed to sing the soundtrack for the 1978 motion picture "Blackjack," a takeoff on "Ocean's 11." Part of the film was shot here and she joined the crew.

"My goodness, I couldn't believe all the names on the marquees - Frank Sinatra, Ann-Margret, Liberace, Sammy Davis Jr. - it boggled my mind that all of these people were in the same city at the same time," Holloway said. "I really came into Las Vegas on the tail end of the glory days when it still had charm."

Her first major engagement in Las Vegas was at the Landmark, which was imploded in 1995 to create a parking lot for the Convention Center.

For two decades she performed in local lounges and in showrooms, opening for entertainers such as Bill Cosby, Jay Leno and Don Rickles and performing with groups such as the Treniers.

"The Treniers were always very generous with everyone," Holloway said. "I would sing with them after I finished my own show."

She said the Treniers were responsible for her becoming an opening act for Cosby.

"He was drumming with them one night at the New Frontier, just messing around," Holloway said. "I got up to sing and after the show I asked Bill what it would take for me to open the show for him - and he said, 'Just ask,' and I did."

She opened for him twice.

Holloway says when she eventually decided to leave Las Vegas, the city was changing.

"Things weren't happening the way I wanted them to," she said. "Sometimes you need to take a break and look at it from a distance."

She says when she returned to her hometown she was able to make her parents' final years happy ones.

"Just to make my mother laugh," Holloway said. "That was my reward - she seldom laughed."

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