SACRAMENTO, Calif.: Robert Ringwald, the pianist who played and promoted jazz in California for more than half a century, has died, according to his daughter, the actor and musician Molly Ringwald. He was 80.
Ringwald, known to friends and fans as Bob, died Aug. 3, Molly Ringwald wrote in an obituary Saturday for the Sacramento Bee. No cause was given.
Born in Roseville, California with vision problems, Ringwald went blind at an early age. He began taking piano lessons at 5 and started his first band at 13.
Four years later, at the age of 17, he was able to grow enough of a beard to be able to pass for an adult to play in nightclubs as a professional musician, an occupation he held for the next six decades, his daughter wrote.
At first drawn to modern jazz, the music of Louis Armstrong instilled in Ringwald a lifelong passion for the performance and preservation of traditional New Orleans jazz.
By the 1970s, Ringwald was playing piano at clubs seven nights a week.
He co-organized the…