Tom Dreesen died Wednesday at 86 years old, one week after making what turned out to be his final television appearance, a guest spot on Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen, the show that replaced The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on CBS last month.
The man who had been Allen's mentor since 1975 made it to the couch one more time before he was gone.
His family announced the death on his official Facebook page. No cause of death was disclosed.
"He wanted you all to know how much joy you brought him through the years," the family wrote. "He said to tell you that he loved you all. May he rest in peace."
David Letterman, 79, posted his tribute on Instagram the same day. "Tom was the first comedian I met at Comedy Store in 1975. We became friends immediately. He had wisdom and endless stories. Everyone admired him, looked up to him and wondered if he ever stopped talking. He never did, he never will. We love him for that. We'll miss the stories. God bless you Tom."
The First Biracial Comedy Duo In America
Tom Dreesen grew up in Chicago and began his comedy career in the late 1960s in partnership with Tim Reid, the actor who would go on to create and star in Frank's Place and WKRP in Cincinnati.
Together they formed Tim and Tom, the first biracial standup comedy duo in the history of American comedy.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, two men, one Black, one white, sharing a stage and building material specifically around the experience of the racial divide they represented was not a neutral act.
It was a statement. The act existed because Reid and Dreesen decided it should.
They worked the circuit together through the early 1970s before Dreesen struck out as a solo act in the mid-1970s.
The solo career that followed took him through the opening-act circuit, warming up for Liza Minnelli, Smokey Robinson, Gladys Knight and Sammy Davis Jr., before the gig that would define how most people eventually came to know him arrived in 1983.
14 Years Opening For Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra was 67 years old when he hired Tom Dreesen as his opening act. Dreesen was 43.
The arrangement that followed lasted 14 years, longer than most marriages, longer than most careers, long enough that Dreesen was on the stage for Sinatra's final concert in 1995.
When Sinatra died in 1998, Dreesen had been part of his world for 15 years.
The relationship Dreesen described was the kind that forms between two men from similar origins, Sinatra grew up in Hoboken, New Jersey in a working-class family, Dreesen grew up in Harvey, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, in genuine poverty, who both understood the specific grind of the entertainment business before any of the glamour arrived.
Sinatra was the most famous entertainer in the world by the time Dreesen joined him. He was also, Dreesen said, something like the father figure he had not had.
"In a lot of ways, he was like a father to me," Dreesen said. "I didn't have a father that really cared that much where I was and what I did. But Frank would give me advice and counsel and then he was a buddy in a lot of ways. I thought the world of him."
The specific experience of opening for Sinatra for 14 years, warming up rooms that contained some of the most powerful, famous and wealthy people in the world every night, in venues that represented the peak of American entertainment, produced both the perspective and the material that sustained Dreesen's career through decades of television appearances, club dates and the comedy elder statesman role he occupied in his final years.
The Letterman Friendship And The Talk Show Legacy
Tom Dreesen met David Letterman at the Comedy Store on Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles in 1975.
Both men were at the beginning of careers that would take them in different directions, Dreesen into clubs and opening acts, Letterman into television, but the friendship they formed that year was the durable kind.
More than 500 national television appearances across Dreesen's career included frequent visits to The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, the show that validated any comedian who appeared on it for the generation that grew up watching Carson, and enough Late Show appearances that Letterman trusted him to guest host in his absence.
That trust is not extended casually. Letterman's show was Letterman's show in the specific way that creative control belongs to someone who built something himself.
The comedian you ask to sit in your chair when you cannot is the comedian you have decided represents something you want your audience to see.
Dreesen also became the mentor figure for Byron Allen, who began his own comedy career in 1975 at age 14 and crossed paths with Dreesen at the start of both of their careers.
Allen built Entertainment Studios from a production company into a media conglomerate worth multiple billions of dollars and acquired a major stake in Weather Channel.
When CBS replaced Stephen Colbert's Late Show last month with Comics Unleashed, Allen's comedy program, Dreesen appeared on the new show as a guest. It was his final television appearance.
The Comics Unleashed Instagram account paid tribute Wednesday. "Tom will forever and for always be a cherished part of the Comics Unleashed family. Despite his health struggles, he brought so much joy, life, and vitality to our set: stay tuned for Tom's last appearance on our show."