Robert Williams Ricketts (March 15, 1885 – November 25, 1936) was an American musician, composer, lyricist, bandleader, song arranger and music publisher.
Upon his arrival in New York City, he had joined forces with Porter Grainger; together they wrote a number of songs and embarked on a number of endeavors including establishing a publishing house called the Rainbow Music Company; their chief financial backer was the composer Irving Berlin[1] In 1924, the Pittsburgh Courier reported that Ricketts and Grainger wrote "twenty-two musical numbers" for a show called Honey, with the book by noted vaudevillians Flournoy E. Miller and Aubrey Lyles.
[2] In 1922, Ricketts led a ten piece orchestra for the show Dumb Luck (featuring Ethel Waters) that toured New England, starting in Stamford, Connecticut; but two weeks later, the cast of a hundred was stranded in Worcester, Massachusetts.
Bernard Peterson reports that "the troupe was finally rescued by the producers of Shuffle Along through the efforts of Noble Sissle and his wife, who raised $700 to enable the cast to return to New York.
"[3] In 1923, "Bob Rickett's Band", consisting of Ricketts on piano, Buddy Christian or Elmer Snowden on banjo, Ernest Elliot on clarinet, Tom Morris, cornet, Charlie Irvis on trombone and Bob Fuller on alto saxophone accompanied blues singer Viola McCoy on a number of recordings.