Bill Holman (born May 21, 1927) is an American songwriter, conductor, composer/arranger, and saxophonist working primarily in the jazz idiom. Born Willis Leonard Holman in Olive, California, near Santa Ana, Holman took up clarinet in junior high school and tenor saxophone in high school. By his late teenage years he was leading his own band. After serving in the United States Navy, where he studied engineering, he decided in the late '40s that he wanted to write big band music.