Blind Pianist Cooks, Plays at His Van Nuys Snack Bar : Dishing Up Some Jazz With Lunch

Seated at a piano, Bob Ringwald is taking requests.

“Satin Doll?” a snack-bar patron calls out between bites of her luncheon salad.

Instantly, Ringwald’s fingers are gliding over the keyboard, toes tapping to the beat of the popular old standard. Ringwald knows most of the oldies, especially anything labeled jazz. If he’s heard it, most likely he can play it by ear.

Sightless since childhood, he shrugs off his handicap as, well, a series of daily challenges.

“There are a lot of people worse off than I am,” he says, his full-bearded face animated as he speaks.

Asked if his blindness presents any problems besides the obvious ones, Ringwald responds negatively. His sight began fading when he was a small child until it was completely gone at age 10. Over the years, he has managed to adjust and in many instances overcome barriers along the way.

“It’s a retinal problem, so there’s no hope,” he says.

Nonetheless, he expresses no bitterness or self-pity. He likes to do things himself, he says, but doesn’t mind a helping hand occasionally.

“I do mind it when people help you without asking, when you don’t need help,” he adds. “That makes you feel a little embarrassed maybe. They grab you and want to hustle you across the street. Maybe you don’t want to go across the street. You know?”

A professional pianist at age 12, Ringwald began earning his living entertaining in Sacramento nightclubs at 17. And he’s been making music ever since. As one critic noted, “He’s played the blues and paid his dues.”

About 3 1/2 years ago, he opened his snack bar in the Van Nuys Federal Building after going through six months of schooling and on-the-job restaurant training in a government-sponsored program established to help the blind.

Diners who stop by between 11:30 a.m. and 1 p.m. Tuesdays or Thursdays are treated to a bit of ragtime, jazz, Dixieland or you-name-it on what Ringwald calls his “almost grand piano.”

Married 28 1/2 years, he rattles off the various occupations of his family, only one of whom is in the entertainment profession. Youngest of three children is 21-year-old actress Molly Ringwald, who began singing with her father’s Fulton Street Jazz Band in Sacramento before she was old enough to attend school.

“She used to sing with us until a couple of years ago,” Ringwald says. “Now she’s too busy. Her next film should be out this summer. It’s called ‘Loser Takes All.’ ”

A resident of North Hollywood, Ringwald, 48, moved his family to the Valley 10 years ago when he formed the Great Pacific Jazz Band. The group -- mostly older men -- first got together at lunchtime jam sessions simply to enjoy themselves. Now, a decade later, the band is firmly established, having received many favorable reviews, particularly of its performances at West Coast jazz festivals.

About six months ago, Ringwald invested $20,000 to produce the group’s first album--”The Great Pacific Jazz Band, the Music of Louis Armstrong”--which was released as an LP, cassette and compact disc.

The band assembles from 7 to 10 p.m. every Sunday at the New 450 Steak House in Northridge to re-create those traditional low-volume, brassy, bass-rich sounds of New Orleans’ Bourbon Street.

The members: Ringwald on banjo; Zeke Zarchy, trumpet; Bob Havens, trombone; Don Nelson, soprano sax; Jim Turner, piano; Jack Wadsworth, bass sax, and Ray Templin, drums.

Ringwald sets the mood early each Sunday when he stops by a non-commercial radio station at Cal State Northridge to spin a few dozen records--mainly classic jazz, early swing and ragtime--from 3:05 to 5:30 p.m. on KCSN. In his 11th year as the program’s disc jockey, he hasn’t earned a dime.

More than 1,000 records are filed in a cabinet a few steps from the broadcasting booth. Yet, in a matter of seconds, Ringwald can find the one he wants and play it.

Index cards with the songs’ titles labeled in Braille are filed alphabetically. Each card is also numbered. Ringwald locates the box of cards on a desk, feels for the title, then the number.

He turns to the cabinet and selects the recording with the corresponding number that he has typed on half-inch Dymo tape and placed inside the record jacket.

He hands the disc to his engineer, “Stay-Up-Stan, the All-Day Record Man,” as he calls him, and voila ! It’s on the turntable as Ringwald enters the booth and slides behind the microphone.

Even the engineer, Stan Brager, a computer systems analyst at Northrop Corp., seems impressed with Ringwald’s inventive filing system.

“Within 10 to 20 seconds, I can pick out the record I want--that’s if I filed it correctly,” Ringwald says. “I’ve got about 50 records I haven’t had time to catalogue yet.”

While on the air, he refers to his Braillewriter in front of him. He already has typed dates, phone numbers, “notes about things I want to talk about.”

Minutes later, he is pulling out an album titled “I Wanna Be Loved by You,” which features a song called “Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” written in 1896. The vocalist: 6-year-old Molly Ringwald.

“The name of the show is Bob Ringwald’s Bourbon Street Parade,” he says while the song is playing. “I’m smart,” he adds with a laugh. “I put my name up front.”

Not surprisingly, his second-floor snack bar also bears his name, garnished with a creative flair, to say the least: Bob’s Gourmet Snack Bar & Car Wash.

Gourmet snacks? Car wash?

“I’ve got a weird sense of humor,” he replies, again punctuating his remark with a burst of laughter.

A customer going through the serving line once jokingly demanded that his car be washed, as advertised.

“Get it up here,” Ringwald told him, “and I’ll wash it.”

When Ringwald isn’t pounding a piano, strumming his banjo or ringing up a sale at the cash register (for safe measure, he runs anything over $1 through a bill identifier), he might be bent over his home computer.

“It talks to me,” he says. “It has a voice synthesizer. I write all my letters, do all the inventories and business stuff for my snack bar, all the contracts for my band, everything, even my weekly menus.

“I’m also a ham operator,” he adds. “I’ve had my license for about 31 years. I talk all over the world, you know. . . . I really don’t take a day off as such. I mean, what would I do with a day off?”

Ringwald was forced to take time off about a year ago--when he suffered a moderate heart attack and spent five days in intensive care. Since then, he has been working out on a treadmill and Exercycle about half an hour daily. Still, he admits to being a bit overweight.

Meanwhile, life goes on. He talks at length about conquering objectives, about his ambitions, perhaps one day opening a restaurant or catering business with his wife, who has nearly completed a two-year course in chef’s training at Trade Tech in Los Angeles.

“I have never let my blindness stop me from doing anything I ever wanted to do,” he says emphatically. “I’ve flown a plane under a pilot’s guidance . . . driven a train . . . driven a car . . . water skied . . . put up antennas for my ham radio, climbing maybe 30, 40 feet in the air. . . .

“I think nothing of getting on a plane and flying someplace by myself. . . . I don’t like to travel overseas by myself because of the language barrier, but any place else, Canada, I don’t mind that. I like to travel.

“Anything I’ve ever wanted to do, I’ve done.”