Royalty
by Don Wilcock
“The ladies was giving us tips and stuff, and one lady wanted us to come back and play for a party, and when we came back that Saturday and came to the bandstand, we were escorted out of there I guess by the Ku Klux Klan. They had sheets over their heads. But back in the day, I was from the south. I thought I was away from there. I was gonna fight, but they rushed out of there. We couldn’t work there no more. That’s right in the neighborhood where I’m living at now. That was back in the days, though.”
Stroger’s seen it all in his 91 years.
“Oh, yeah. I wouldn’t take nothing for it, though. All this is about love, you know? It’s about love. So, this life, we went through a lot, but it makes me feel good to play for audiences in this troubled world. I played a lot of audiences. They come in with the long face, and when they leave, they have smiles on their faces. We have so much fun. So, I think when I do that, I done my job, you know?
“I love my job. I’m doing something everybody can’t do. This is a profession for me. I didn’t get to school or college. I got a profession. It makes me feel good for peoples to remember me even when I’m dead and gone. Even when I’ve come and gone, my name is still carried on. That means so much to me, yeah.”
The pandemic has been rough for Stroger. “Boy, ain’t never been nuthin’ like this in my life, you know? It’s no fun me working right now because I like to play for the people, and it’s so hard for me to be on the bandstand and not connect with the people. It’s really hard on me because I wanna take pictures, sign autographs and all that. Now, you’re almost playing in a shell. There ain’t never been nuthin’ like this. You always live and learn.”
“It’s very hard. I’m playing sometimes, and I forget myself. You go home (after a a show) and say, ‘Damn, did I do something wrong?’ It’s hard. It’s really difficult, you know? Picking the jobs. I’m glad now ’cause I don’t play just to play. I like to have fun playing.”
He talks about his new album with The Headcutters. “Oh, it’s my family. It’s a band I been working with 10 or 15 years now. I got to South America playin’ that music, and those guys been playin’ together ever since they was kids. And they’re traditional blues. That’s where I came up with the CD because I really wanted a traditional harmonica player.”
Joe Marhofer’s harmonica on that album stands out.
“He sounds like he was born and bred in Mississippi. That’s what’s so amazing about this group. They play traditional southern blues, man. They really come around to me. We was down at the plantation with those guys, and they were so amazed. They wanted to come down south, so they could see it.
“They feel what they’re doing, and they’re just like my kids. They call me the Godfather. So many people in my career have helped me along, Sunnyland and all those guys. So, I just wanted to put something back and thought those guys really deserve it because it wasn’t that much. I never cared too much about CDs, you know, but I just wanted to do something with those guys because you know they really deserve it.”
The album was recorded in Brazil in 2019. “There’s a lot of traditional stuff on there. Lots of people aren’t doing that anymore, and I had some things of my own on there, and then some of my heroes. I wanted to do some of their songs on there. It’s a nice mixture of songs we put together, and we had so much fun doing it together. We pretty much talked to one another every day.”
The traditional covers include Jr. Parker’s “What Goes On in the Dark” and “Stranded in St. Louis, “Just A Bad Boy” by Eddie Tayler, “CC Rider” covered by more than 100 artists from Lightnin’ Hopkins to The Animals, “Move to the Outskirts of Town” by Casey Bill Weldon, “Keep Your Hands Off Her” by Jay McShann, “Pretty Girls” by Eugine Church, and Big Bill Broonzy’s “Just A Dream.”
There are five original songs by Stroger on the record. “It’s just a story that you tell. Most of my songs that I do, it’s my personality. I never call myself a singer. I’m mostly a performer. I tell stories, and lots of stories are about me.
“So, it wasn’t that hard doing all of this recording that was forced on me.
I never wanted to record. All I wanted to do was play, but my friend when we was in Mississppi, Big Daddy Fred. He wanted to open up a festival, a blues festival over there. He just came on to me, and he wanted to do a CD on me, and he did a CD on me playing with all the guys I was working with.
“Sunnyland always wanted me to sing. I never did sing. I did one on Earwig (She’s Got A Thing Going On in 1998), and then I worked with Willie. So, me and Kenny, he’s my son. So, we put one together for Willie. We sing on that one. Then, this one coming out now I’m doing for the Headhunters. We wanted to put one together.
“‘Something Strange” is from relationships. Another one on there, “I’m A Lonely Man,” I did for my wife when she passed. Every song has some kind of meaning to it.”
Stroger is on more than 30 records with Delmark. He misses Bob Koester who founded the label in 1953. “Me and Bob go back, oh, 30 or 40 years. I’ve been doing stuff with Bob at Delmark for years and years. This is the first time I did stuff on my own, but I’ve been recording for him for years and years. He loved my playing, but he never thought I was a singer. (Laugh) We go way back.
“I’ve been really blessed, and I love what I’m doing. Very few blues musicians get rich doing this, but I have fun. All I want to do is have fun and try to make a living at it. I ain’t trying to be a superstar. I ain’t never wanted to be a superstar. I always wanted to be able to go out and be with the audience and talk to them as friends.
“I love what I’m doing, and there ain’t too many people going to a day job that love and can’t wait to go to work, and that’s what I am. I am very fortunate. I love my job, and I love to go to work, and that’s something you don’t hear too often.”
Bob Stroger has the biggest, brightest, broadest smile of any bluesman I’ve ever met. He’s one of a kind, truly an ambassador of the blues.