Robert “Bob” Ringwald, jazz musician and father of actress Molly Ringwald, died August 2 at the age of 80.
Ringwald shared the news via Instagram on Saturday along with a selection of photos. No cause of death has been revealed.
“It is with heavy hearts that my family says goodbye to my father,” said the Pretty in pink star wrote. “I consider myself very lucky to have had in my life as long as I have. Robert Scott Ringwald 1940-2021.
The eldest Ringwald was born in Roseville, California, a small town near Sacramento. Molly revealed in an obituary that her father was legally blind as a baby and totally blind by the time he was a teenager.
Bob’s love for music started at an early age. He began taking piano lessons at the age of 8, adding guitar and banjo in later years. The training prepared him for a long career as a jazz musician, starting with the formation of his first band, The Rhythemaires, at the age of 13. Four years later, he grew a beard to look older and started working in nightclubs. a name for himself as a pianist.
In 1960, he graduated from high school and married Adele Frembd, his wife of 60 years and mother of his three children: Molly, Beth and Kelly. A fourth child, Robert Scott Jr., died of leukemia at age 3.
Although he focused on modern jazz early in his career, he turned to traditional New Orleans jazz after discovering the music of Louis Armstrong. He would go on to co-host the first Sacramento Jazz Festival in 1974 which lasted over four decades.
Molly remembered her beloved father’s humorous nature, which continued until his last days.
“Anyone who knew Bob also knew his mischievous side and his ever-present, slightly ribald sense of humor,” she wrote in the Sacramento Bee. “If you hadn’t begged enough to get off his email joke list, you would have received one just days before he died.”
Read Molly’s tribute below.