Bob Stroger & The Headcutters
Biographie Bob Stroger & The Headcutters
Bob Stroger
still actively touring at the age of 94, is reaping the rewards for his decades of laying the foundation for countless blues bands. No performer has ever been inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame at an older age. He was also the 2024 recipient of the Blues Music Award for Instrumentalist – Bass, the fifth time he had earned the honor.
Stroger had been a journeyman bassist with several small blues, R&B and jazz groups in Chicago before he became a steady, recognizable fixture on the international blues scene, initially thanks to his work behind Otis Rush starting in 1975. Even then, his surname (pronounced STRO-jer) was so unfamiliar to fellow musicians (and record producers) that the first times his name appeared in album credits he was listed as “Bob Strokes,” the way Rush and Sunnyland Slim knew him.
Robert T. Stroger was born December 27, 1930, on a farm between Hayti and Swift in the Missouri bootheel. He only took an interest in music after he moved to Chicago, especially when he lived on the West Side so close to the legendary Silvio’s that he could look out and see Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf through the windows. In 1949 he married the sister of guitarist Johnny Ferguson, who played in J.B. Hutto’s band. With further encouragement from Calvin “Fuzz” Jones and Bob Anderson, he learned guitar with the strings tuned to provide bass accompaniment before buying a four-string electric bass. He and his brother John had a group once called the Red Tops and then Joe Russell and the Blues Hustlers– eschewing the Stroger name another time for an easier pseudonym. Stroger went on to play locally with jazz saxophonist Rufus Forman (briefly), bluesman Morris Pejoe and others, enjoying a long stint with guitarist Eddie King playing blues and soul. His first studio recordings were with King in the 1960s. At times he also did factory work, ran a confectionery store and worked as an exterminator. In the 1950 census he described his job as “Make kitchen gadgets.”
Through Otis Rush’s drummer Jesse Green Stroger found a spot in Rush’s band, which led to studio and club work and his first European tours. Rush helped Stroger hone his playing into a strong, solid blues groove. Sunnyland Slim was a regular employer, and he also played and recorded with Snooky Pryor, Pinetop Perkins, Wille “Big Eyes” Smith, Jimmy Rogers, Carey Bell, Eddie C. Campbell, the band Mississippi Heat, Bob Corritore and many others, in the U.S. and overseas. At the urging of Sunnyland Slim he began singing and first recorded as a vocalist in 1993 on one track of a Mississippi Heat CD and then on a German CD credited to the Big Four Blues Band (with Steve Freund, Robert Covington and Sam Burckhardt).
His first CD under his own name was “In the House: Live at Lucerne, Vol. 1,” from the 1998 Lucerne Blues Festival, released by Crosscut in 2002, followed by “Bob Is Back in Town” on Airway (2006), “Keepin’ Together” on Big Eye (with Kenny “Beedy Eyes” Smith, 2014) and “That’s My Name” on Delmark (with a Brazilian band, the Headcutters, 2022). He also appears on various festival CDs from Lucerne and elsewhere and has joined several all-star aggregations. He has recently toured in a Chicago Blues SuperSession package, beaming with pleasure at still being able to do what he loves onstage. Grateful for the help offered him along his path to success especially by Rush, Sunnyland, Jimmy Dawkins and Eddie Taylor, he has in turn passed his knowledge and advice along, providing instructions to young musicians at the Pinetop Perkins Foundation in Clarksdale, Mississippi, every year.
