Korla Pandit (September 16, 1921 – October 2, 1998), born John Roland Redd, was an American musician, composer, pianist, and organist. After moving to California in the late 1940s and getting involved in show business, Redd became known as "Korla Pandit", a French-Indian musician from New Delhi, India. However, Redd was actually a light-skinned African-American man from Missouri who passed as Indian. A pathbreaking musical performer in the early days of television, Redd is known for Korla Pandit's Adventures In Music; the show was the first all-music program on television. He also performed live and on radio and made various film appearances, becoming known as the "Godfather of Exotica". Redd maintained the Korla Pandit persona—both in public and in private—until the end of his life. Early life, marriage, and family In 1921, John Roland Redd was born in St. Louis, Missouri. His father, Ernest Redd, was an African-American Baptist pastor. Redd's mother, Doshia O'Nina Johnson, had Anglo and African ancestry. Both parents were descended from African-American enslaved persons. Redd was one of seven children and had light skin and straight hair. In 1922, Redd's family moved to Hannibal, Missouri, where they lived for nine years. In 1931, they moved to Columbia, where Redd's father was pastor of the second-largest Baptist church in town. Given the Jim Crow restrictions in the state, Redd and his siblings attended racially segregated public schools for African-American children. The Redd family later recalled John Redd as a musical prodigy from the age of three; he could hear a song once and have it memorized, and family members taught him to play piano from an early age. A contemporary of Redd's, jazz pianist Charles Thompson, knew Redd from Columbia, where they attended high school together. Later in life, Thompson remembered that as a teenager, Redd was the better piano player of the two. The whole Redd family was musically talented; Redd's two sisters sang, and one played piano. His older brother, Ernest Redd Jr. (known as "Speck" for his freckles) (1913–1974), also became a jazz pianist and later a band leader in Des Moines, Iowa. John and Ernest Redd played in groups with their older brother Harry, who was also a musician. In the early 1940s, Redd met his sister Frances's white friend and roommate, Beryl June DeBeeson, a Disney artist and former dancer. They fell in love and in 1944 they married in Tijuana, Mexico,