Chicago Blues Bassist Bob Stroger released his new album, “That’s My Name,” at 91 with his longtime band, the Headcutters of Brazil.
In an interview with the Chicago Tribune Stroger says, “That’s My Name,” is a travelogue of blues history, with detours through old friends and collaborators, like singer and bandleader Parker, who moved to Chicago in 1968, three years before he died. And Eddie Taylor, a guitar-playing friend and local blues fixture who died in 1985. The first track is a cover of Parker’s “What Goes On In the Dark”; the second is Taylor’s “Just a Bad Boy.” “I just wanted both guys to be part of my CD,” Stroger says, in a phone interview from his Chicago home. “When I sang their tunes, I can feel them, you know?”
Much of Stroger’s life story lends itself to the Great Migration, when he left Hayti Missouri for Chicago after his father got a job on the Wabash Railroad. “When I was down South, I didn’t see nothing but multiple cotton fields,” Stroger says. “When I first came here, we moved to the West Side. I used to get on the streetcars and ride from one end to the other. Every place I looked up was tall buildings. I had moved to another world.”
Stoger is not planning on slowing down anytime soon. He has recently returned to the stage and is planning an international tour.
