Chicago jazz legend Isaac ‘Redd’ Holt dies at 91

Chances are you’ve tapped your foot, clapped your hands, bopped your head or just plain gotten out of your seat to dance to the music Chicago jazz legend Isaac “Redd” Holt created as the drummer in a number of groups — including the Chicago-born Ramsey Lewis Trio.

Their live album “The In Crowd” — recorded at the Bohemian Caverns nightclub in Washington, D.C. — topped the Billboard R&B Chart and reached the penultimate position on the top 200 albums chart in 1965. It also won a Grammy and its title track cracked the top five singles chart.

His bandmates — Lewis on piano and Eldee Young on bass — were teenage pals from growing up on the West Side. 

“They were so revolutionary, they broke out and went mainstream. They went global and turned it basically into pop music,” said Mike Jeffers, founder of Chicago Jazz Magazine.

“Mr. Holt was known as the ‘Master of Time’ because his time was just impeccable,” Jeffers said. “You keep time as the drummer, and Redd never varied or rushed or dragged. His time was always in the pocket of improvisational jazz, and that meant it felt good, and as a listener you’re feeling it, and grooving and dancing, that means that drummer is right in the pocket.”

Friends said Mr. Holt was known to answer the phone by simply saying: “This is The Master of Time.”

The group was originally known as Ramsey Lewis and the Gentlemen of Swing — but trios were trending so they changed their name. 

Mr. Holt spruced up his name, too, from “Red” to “Redd” — to catch some of the mojo associated with comedian Redd Foxx, who gigged alongside the trio for a time, said Mr. Holt’s son, Reggie Holt.

Mr. Holt got the nickname because when he played in certain sunlight as a child his hair and light-toned skin took on a reddish color, his family said.

Financial and creative differences split the trio in 1966 and Mr. Holt and Young went on to form the Young-Holt Trio, which eventually morphed into the Young-Holt Unlimited, a band that featured a wider cast of musicians until the group broke up in 1974. He followed it up with the Redd Holt Unlimited.

Mr. Holt’s post-Ramsey Lewis trio groups blended jazz, blues, and gospel into funky beats that included hits like “Soulful Strut” and “Wah Wah Man” and “Wack Wack” and other tunes that were sampled by a range of hip-hop artists including De La Soul and Kendrick Lamar, according to bassist and pal Ken Haebich.

Mr. Holt’s childhood sweetheart and wife, Marylean, was often at home in Chatham with their three sons as Mr. Holt hit the road to tour, but his brood regularly traveled with the band in the summer.

“He was a superb dad and when I saw him breaking out his suitcase I would become sad and I tried to get in his suitcase a couple times so he would take me with him,” Reggie Holt said.

Mr. Holt died May 23 from complications associated with lung cancer. He was 91.

“He rode that roller coaster of being in the entertainment field, and I watched him rise up from ashes maybe four different times,” Reggie Holt said. “There were lean years and lots of odd jobs, he was never too prideful between gigs.”

Mr. Holt once picked up extra cash by working with Meals on Wheels to deliver food to the elderly. It was maybe not the best fit. Lots of hungry clients recognized him and wanted to chat, keeping him from moving on to his next delivery, family said. 

The original Ramsey Lewis Trio reunited for a tour and album in the 1980s, and Mr. Holt and Lewis let any hard feelings go because they considered each other family.

“Dad was like his big brother, he had to promise Ramsey’s mother that he would always get Ramsey back home safe and keep him away from drugs when he’d pick him up for rehearsal as teenagers,” Reggie Holt said.

Mr. Holt attended Crane High School and formed a band called the West Side Cleffs before being drafted into the military during the Korean War. He served in a tank unit and played in a military band while stationed in Germany. He never took part in combat, Reggie Holt said.

His professional career took off when he got out of the military after serving for two years.

Mr. Holt spent much of the 1990s playing with various musicians, including Young, during weekslong stretches gigging in Asia, in places like Singapore and Jakarta.

Starting around 2000, Mr. Holt began a two-decade run playing weekly shows at the East Bank Club, an arrangement that ended with the pandemic lockdown in 2020.

Mr. Holt, who moved to Chicago from Mississippi when he was 8 years old, also played at dozens of Chicago Public School gymnasiums and auditoriums through the Urban Gateways program, which sought to get children engaged in the arts.

“We played swing and bebop and kids would just be going crazy,” said Haebich, who gigged with Mr. Holt for years through the program and at the East Bank Club.

During the pandemic, Mr. Holt played in the backyard of the Arlington Heights home of Tim O’Neill, who invited hundreds of his neighbors and turned the space into a “mini Ravinia.” 

According to O’Neil, a higher power — and the white pages — brought them together.

As a kid, O’Neil became obsessed with listening to his parents’ vinyl album of “The In Crowd”. 

As an adult, on a whim, he looked up Mr. Holt in the phone book and left him a message asking him to sign the album. 

Mr. Holt called him back and agreed. It was the beginning of a close friendship.

“It took him a little while to open up to me because I think he was a little suspicious of the little white dude with red hair coming from Arlington Heights,” said O’Neil, a heating and air conditioning expert who helped Mr. Holt fix up his home in exchange for signing a pair of drum sticks. 

O’Neil, 63, recorded one of the concerts in his yard and turned it into an album benefitting the musicians that Mr. Holt named “Where’s the Cats, Man?”

The title is based off a question he once asked Mr. Holt: When you die and are in front of God, what are you going to say?

“He responded: ‘Where’s the cats, Man?’ ... as in, ‘Where are all my buddies?’” O’Neil said.

In addition to his wife, Marylean, and his son, Reggie, Mr. Holt is survived by his sons Monti and Ivan, as well as eight grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

A public memorial to honor Mr. Holt is being planned.