Sugar ruled the stage with talent

Count Basie sang her praises. Greg Allman was a devotee.

In Charleston, where she and husband/pianist Marty Scherr graced many a fabled club and stage, she was known as the Queen of Entertainers. And her audience was as diverse as could be, cutting across age groups, musical tastes and styles.

When Sugar Holt (nee Edna Patricia Holt Scherr) passed from the scene on Jan. 5 at age 82, one of the most distinctive interpreters of jazz and popular ballads ever to milk a note was silenced. But her work lives on in recordings, and in the memories of friends, family and fans.

"My mother had such a natural gift. She'd open her mouth and it just fell out," says local vocalist

Bobbie Storm, who followed in her parents' footsteps. "And when she sang a ballad, there wasn't a dry eye in the house."

No one knew that better than Scherr, 81, Holt's spouse of 47 years and her greatest advocate.

"It was the warmth and the quality of her voice, her delivery, her unique sweetness and charm that thrilled audiences," he says. "Most professional musicians I know considered her to have been a world-class singer. She stopped traffic with her talent, but her stage presence was relaxed and at home. We were both the same, joined at the hip. I just wish I had inherited the musical talent she was born with."

Child of vaudeville

Born in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1929, Holt was a child of vaudeville, of traveling fairs, of honky-tonks and endless travel. When vaudeville declined, her father's act, the Royal Hawaiians, disbanded. Though she had vowed to follow her dad wherever he went, a visit to Charleston with her father's fair put a temporary hold on the 19-year-old's life on the road. The city had captured her heart, and within two weeks she landed her first gig at the 49 Club.

In the 1950s, she was a one-woman "Show Boat" in Charleston, working at the 49 Club for two years, then the hugely popular Carriage House, a supper club and jazz showcase.

By mid-decade, Holt had left the Carriage House to accept a job as producer-in-training at WCBD-TV here, but soon found herself as host and resident singing cowgirl of the daytime kids' show "Lucky 2 Ranch." This, opposite her friendly competitor, WCSC-TV's Rainey (Happy Raine) Evans. Before long, Holt was handling three live programs for the station.

Yet the siren song of the road returned, and Holt spent 1955-56 touring with the Sixth Naval District Band. In 1958, she opened her own club, The Cove, on East Bay Street. Again, jazz was the lingua franca. By late 1959, however, it had become too much to handle being a parent, a club owner, and its lead performer. She returned home to Jacksonville.

High notes

In December 1963, during a gig in Daytona Beach, she met Scherr, a Norfolk, Va., native, every bit as devoted to music as she.

"She was playing with a band in the big room at the Five O'Clock Club," Scherr recalls. "I was playing in the same building, though in a small jazz lounge. On my break one night I went around to see who the new singer was. I heard her and fell in love. She'd also come hear me play. By February of that year, we had our own group, Patti and the Playboys, and were married on March 2."

Many luminaries of the era would sit in with the Scherrs at their club, Patti and Marty's at the King's Inn Hotel, among them pianist Andre Previn and members of the London Symphony. Most memorably, Count Basie asked them to sit in with him. The Scherrs' recordings were successful, and their audience grew. After seven years playing Daytona, Holt pronounced herself homesick for Charleston.

Scherr had no idea she was as "big" back home as she was, but got a rapid education. They were playing to packed houses within a week of returning, with Holt recapturing the name "Sugar," which her mother had given her as a child. For years thereafter, Tego Bay and Trotter's were two of their most popular venues.

"I've heard a lot of singers, and Sugar was as good as any," says her one-time roommate Betty Dwyer, who now lives in Greenwood. "We met when I was 21 during a New Year's Eve in 1950. She got up to sing and I was astonished. Later, I found that the more Sugar sang, the stronger her voice got. She could easily have played in the big time, and had plenty of offers from big bands, but she loved Charleston so much she kept turning them down."

Scherr says his wife already had spent her childhood on the road -- she sang at the Paramount Theater in New York at age 4 -- which made it easier to decline the offers. That and having a young daughter (from a previous relationship), Bobbie Storm.

The Scherrs split time between Charleston and Daytona Beach until moving here for good in 1992.

The Natural

Storm says her mom may have had great natural instincts and a fine instrument, but that she worked hard at it.

"When I was younger, it was amazing to me how easily the music seemed to come to her and how hard it was for me to do. But as I got older and we discussed it, I found it did not come easily. Her voice was a mixture of Julie London and Patti Page. She was larger than life on stage, singing like a bird. I'm still so proud of her.

"Together, she and Marty were like one spirit, one ray of energy. Onstage they bounced off each other like they were in the living room. The longest break I recall her taking from performing was six or seven months, and that was over a period of years. She was singing up until five years ago."

Holt and Scherr performed more or less regularly here and elsewhere in the Southeast until Holt was 77, when a broken hip sidelined her career and led to a host of other health issues. Six months ago, she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease.

Pianist and author Bob Alberti, now in Bluffton after a long career in California, also is noted for being a musical director for Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme as well as for Bob Hope. Today, he still plays at the Jazz Corner in Hilton Head and the Westin Hotel in Savannah. He recalls Holt with admiration.

"We met in 1952 when I was playing at the Carriage House," says Alberti, who included Holt in his 2005 memoir "Up the Ladder and Over the Top." "Sugar was singing there at the time and not only was she extremely talented but absolutely gorgeous. One particular thing I remember was that, while there was a segregation problem in the South then, there was one club she knew of in a dark alley where black and white musicians could get together and play after hours. She introduced me to that place, to my delight. She helped break barriers."

It was indicative of the woman, say those closest to her.

"It's her kind spirit that always will remain with me," says Storm, who has returned to performing of late . "She was one of the kindest people you ever meet, and would do anything for anybody. She always lent a sympathetic ear."