Page 36 - Blues Festival Guide Magazine 2024 Digital Edition

Living

Legend

Bob

Stroger

By Marilyn Stringer respected.” Escaping the hardships of the South, many parents
If you sat down with blues bassist Bob Stroger and asked migrated north to find jobs, leaving their children behind with
him his philosophy on life, he would tell you, “I’m a poor family members. At age 16, Bob and his brother eventually
man living a rich man’s life. Some rich men will travel around followed their father to Chicago. “My father left Missouri and
the world playing golf. I go around the world playing my moved to Chicago to work on the Wabash Railroad. I wasn’t
instrument. I stay in some better hotels and eat some better with my father ‘cause he rode the rails from town to town with
food. I have friends all over the world, I love to travel and I his job. Now, a lot of people can tell you exact dates, but I
have a lot of fun. I love my job! The music is a part of me. don’t think much about things in the past.”
When it gets so it’s not part of me, that’s when I quit.” Although Bob never played with Muddy Waters, Muddy
Many blues lovers give little credit to the bass player. They was instrumental in launching Bob’s career. “When we moved
don’t realize the bass and the drums are the glue that holds to Chicago, we lived right behind Silvio’s Nightclub. I could
the whole ship together – the “heartbeat” of the band. Bob look out my back door and look in through their back door
Stroger, one of the last living Chicago legends, has played because there was no air conditioning, and all the windows
on hundreds of albums behind all the blues greats, and has and doors were open, especially in the summertime. I could
defined the role of what an electric bass playing Chicago- hear and see all the musicians – Muddy, Howlin’ Wolf and
style blues should sound like. To quote his friend and fellow all of them. That’s what got me really started with this scene.”
musician, Bob Corritore, “Bob is the best blues bassist in the Every night, Bob would also drive his brother-in-law, Johnny
universe. He knows how to find the pocket, plays effortlessly, Ferguson, to his gigs with J.B. Hutto and their band, The
finds cool and surprising bass runs, never distracts and always Twisters, at a club on 39 and State Street in Chicago. He
th
supports his fellow musicians.” would watch them, then go home and teach himself to play.
Bob was born on a farm in rural Hayti, MO, on December “My brother John and I started a band, but nobody wanted
27, 1930. Bob lost his mother at age five. His father was a to play the bass. John was the drummer and my cousin Ralph
sharecropper by day and a guitar player at night. In the South Ramey played harmonica. The guitar player, Banks, who
during the ‘30s and ‘40s, once children were big enough to became a preacher later, didn’t want to play the bass. I
pick and chop cotton, they were pulled out of school to work, wanted to be in the band, so I said I’d play it. I first started on
losing out on an education. “I didn’t really get the education the upright bass, but we couldn’t travel with it, so I switched to
I needed, but I am blessed. When I was a little boy, I always a guitar bass. Back then, we would run the guitar strings down
wanted people to respect me. Now I am doing this and I am an octave lower and we would use the guitar for the bass."

34 Blues Festival Guide 2024