The Redhead behind The Redhead Piano Bar
Eileen Wolcoff loved the color red. Curvaceous and vivacious, she looked smashing in red. And her hair seemed to get just a little redder with each passing year.
She opened The Redhead Piano Bar at 16 W. Ontario, where many nightclubbers have closed out the night by putting bread in the jar to hear “Sweet Caroline” or “Piano Man.” Its walls and awning are red. The famed sign over the club — with a winking redhead— is Eileen Wolcoff, said her daughter Monica.
“That’s Mom making fun of herself,” she said.
“She started The Redhead, and she was the redhead,” said Alan Kaye, a friend who said she had “legs like Juliet Prowse,” the danceractress whose hoofing in the 1959 film “Can- Can” scandalized Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.
Ms. Wolcoff died May 27, her daughter said. Legal documents say she was 74, though her daughter said she suspects she was older.
Friends and relatives plan to gather Wednesday at The Redhead to remember a woman who loved a good party, her daughter said: “Everybody’s got to make toasts.”
She grew up Eileen Mellendorf in Oak Park and started working as a teenager, often waitressing and bartending, her daughter said.
“She was a self- made woman,” she said. After her parents and sister died in a house fire, “My mom grew up in an orphanage.”
For a time, she worked as a “bunny mom” in Hugh Hefner’s Playboy empire. “She dressed the girls,” her daughter said. “She loved the girls. She raised them while raising herself.”
“She had been through such heartache,” her daughter said. “Two bad marriages and still came out beautiful and loving. ... She taught all of us great lessons and always gave us good advice.”
Over the years, “She was blond, and then she started doing strawberry blond, and red, and red, and redder,” her daughter said.
At one point, Eileen Wolcoff helped operate the Four Torches restaurant and bar at 1960 Lincoln ParkWest.
Her daughter said she also owned women’s clothing boutiques at 2 E. Oak and 1030 N. State.
“She dealt with a lot of bunnies and models,” said Alan Kaye.
When The Redhead opened, “She wanted it upscale,” her daughter said. “She didn’t want to be sitting with anybody with jeans.”
It still operates into the wee small hours of the morning with a business- casual dress code.
Over the years, the bar has drawn performers including Seth MacFarlane, Chrissie Hynde, Jim Peterik of the Ides of March and Survivor, Kevin Cronin of REO Speedwagon and the piano man himself, Billy Joel.
She later sold to a new management group but continued to receive quarterly checks because she maintained The Redhead trademark and logo, according to her daughter. “We can open up anywhere we want,” she said.
She enjoyed vacationing in Playa del Carmen, Mexico. Two of her favorite restaurants were the now- closed Arnie’s at 1030N. State and La Strada Ristorante at 155 N. Michigan.
In addition to her daughter, she is survived by one great- grandchild and three grandchildren.
A private service is planned Wednesday at The Clare, followed by a 1 p. m. lunch at Volare, 201 E. Grand, and a trip to The Redhead at about 4 p. m. to raise a glass in her memory.
“It’s not ‘ goodbye,’ ” her daughter said. “It’s ‘ see you later,’ and ‘ we got you covered.’ ”