Remembering Red Hot Skillet Lickers drummer, teacher Sly Randolph

Sly Randolph’s name never adorned a marquee. The drummer didn’t lead his own band or record under his own name. But on the bandstand, where he was a tasteful and consummately swinging accompanist, Randolph was the straw stirring the drink. And with his death Dec. 2 at age 79 the Bay Area music scene has been diminished.

A longtime Richmond resident deeply involved in the Belding Woods neighborhood, Randolph spent the first decades of his career in New York, where he played in jazz combos, Broadway pit orchestras, society dance bands, and funk outfits, including Mystic Merlin, which recorded three albums for Capitol Records in the early 1980s and earned an avid following in the United Kingdom. But Randolph’s influence spread far beyond the bandstand, particularly after he moved to the Bay Area in the early 1980s. 

As an educator, Randolph taught at the Oaktown Jazz Workshops and the Young Musicians Program in Berkeley (now known as the Young Musicians Choral Orchestra), which offered low-income students a conservatory experience. He also taught out of his private studio behind the Richmond house he shared with his wife, Julie Rust. A beloved teacher, he mentored renowned drummers such as Darrell Green, Tim Angulo, Genius Wesley, and Jaimeo Brown, among many others. 

“He loved teaching and was so committed to his students,” Rust said. “Cleaning up in the last few days I found copious notes of his lesson plans for each student.”

Brown was a teenager headed down the wrong path when his father, a bassist who played occasionally with Randolph, sent his wayward son for lessons. More than a teacher, Randolph became a steadying force for Brown “at a time when I was getting into trouble, hanging out at the wrong spots and going in the wrong direction,” he recalled.  

“I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for Sly Randolph, and I mean that literally,” said Brown, who’s working on the third album in his acclaimed jazz-meets-Black-roots-music series Transcendence. The weekly lessons not only provided trap set fundamentals, they imbued in Brown a vision of jazz as part of a larger cultural fabric connecting the African diaspora.  

“He understood the roots,” Brown said. “Coming out of Harlem, Sly played jazz, R&B, Afro-Caribbean, all of those styles, and he understood and taught there were common denominators.”

His command of shuffles, blues, and swing grooves made him an invaluable addition to Lavay Smith and the Red Hot Skillet Lickers, the San Francisco swing and jump blues band that earned national attention during the 1990s swing dance renaissance. Randolph took over the group’s drum chair in the mid-1990s “and was an integral part of the most important formative period in our musical history,” Skillet Lickers pianist Chris Siebert wrote in a Facebook post announcing Randolph’s death. 

The little big band became a showcase for some of the region’s most esteemed jazz artists, players who came on the scene in the 1940s and ‘50s such as trumpeter Allen Smith, saxophonist Bill Stewart, Jules Broussard, and Hal Stein, and trombonist Danny Armstrong (who continued to perform with the group). 

“As we hit the road, our band became a traveling school where these veterans became our teachers, engaging in an ongoing musical conversation with the younger members of the band,” Siebert wrote. “Sly was a huge part of this, and he was beloved by all of the younger players as well as by all of the veterans.”

He was the band’s engine on the group’s first out-of-state tour to the Northeast in 1998 and played hundreds of Skillet Lickers gigs at the Cafe du Nord, Club Deluxe, Top Of The Mark and many other Bay Area venues. He also played at the swanky San Francisco restaurant Bix every Friday for 20 years with George Khouri, Dave Ellis and Terry Hilliard.

While he eventually decided to cut back on touring with the Skillet Lickers, “he stayed in the mix with us, playing on many Bay Area gigs right up until 2022,” Siebert wrote. “He went on to play in groups led by several of our band members, becoming a go-to drummer for bassist Marcus Shelby and saxophonist Howard Wiley.”

In addition to his music career, Randolph worked at Kaiser

Born in New York City on Nov. 30, 1945, Randolph grew up in Harlem, raised by a single mother who struggled with alcohol, Rust said. He attained a solid foundation in drumming rudiments in drum corps and went on to study with Billy English, who worked with many early R&B acts and jazz greats (but is probably best known as a house drummer at the Apollo Theater). “I think music kept him from going down the wrong path,” she said. 

Coming into his own, Randolph worked widely in New York, including a stint at the Rainbow Room with trumpet, vibraphonist, vocalist and arranger Sy Oliver. He was on the road with the Broadway musical Raisin (an adaptation of Lorraine Hansberry’s A Raisin In the Sun) in 1977 when he met Richmond native Rust, who was sitting in the front row of the Curran Theater on the last performance in the San Francisco run. 

Sly noticed me and invited me to have a drink,” she recalled. “As the drummer it took him the most time to put his gear together, and I ended up helping him, and that made a big impression.”

One thing led to another and he ended up spending the night at her place in Berkeley. When he left in the morning “I ended up crying because I knew I wanted to marry him, and I didn’t think I’d see him again,” she said. But they did reconnect whenever he came through the area with a show, and before long the feelings were mutual. 

They tried life together in New York City for about a year, but she missed the East Bay and they moved back, eventually buying the house in Richmond’s Belding Woods neighborhood. Leaving New York, where he was well-established, meant having to rebuild his career. Rather than depend on hustling for gigs and students, he got a job with Kaiser and spent about three decades as a unit assistant in the Richmond location, where he’d bring a jazz combo in for special events and holiday parties. 

Charming and smart, Randolph excelled at the job, which entailed coordinating between doctors, nurses and clients. “He had such an engaging personality,” Rust said. “People were pretty enchanted with him.” 

A stroke in April made it impossible for him to play, and his health declined until his death. In addition to his wife, he’s survived by his son Kevin Randolph of Antioch and daughter Zakia Randolph of New York City. Rust said there will be a celebration of his life in the spring.