Nightlife / Music

Mike and Jim Stroehle continue a Quad-City musical legacy

By David Burke | Saturday, May 17, 2008 | () comments

(Photo by John Schultz/QUAD-CITY TIMES) Piano player Mike Stroehle, left, and drummer Jim Stroehle perform with The Nitecrawlers on Wednesday nights at the Rusty Nail in Davenport. The Nightcrawlers are one of among dozens of bands the brothers have played with in the Quad-Cities the past 40-plus years. Buy this Photo

VIDEO: Stroehle Brothers continue a musical legacy
Mike and Jim Stroehle, who perform with The Nitecrawlers on Wednesday night…
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Dancers, from senior citizens in polyester to a far younger man in a cowboy hat and a tank top, are all on the floor at the Rusty Nail in Davenport on this Wednesday night.

They’re dancing to the music of the Nitecrawlers, who provide songs from the 1940s through the ’70s, including “Satin Doll,” “You’re Nobody Till Somebody Loves You,” “Great Balls of Fire” and “All That Jazz.”

Keeping a steady beat on the drums is 56-year-old Jim Stroehle, who lives in Davenport, while his brother Mike, 63, of Pleasant Valley, Iowa, holds forth on the keyboards.

The Nitecrawlers is one of among dozens of bands in the annals of Quad-City music with which the brothers have played, as well as being one among a number in which they play both individually and separately.

It’s also carrying on a legacy left by their father, Joe Stroehle.

While the brothers can boast of backing up the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Herman’s Hermits, Bo Diddley and B.B. King, their father sat in on piano with Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, George Burns and Tommy Dorsey.

Joe Stroehle, who died in 1986, was instrumental in getting a young Bix Beiderbecke to move from Davenport to New York, and he played with another made-in-the-Quad-Cities music legend, drummer Louis Bellson.

“My dad never bragged about any of that stuff, and I didn’t know of it,” Jim Stroehle said.

In an interview after a regular midweek gig at the Rusty Nail, the brothers talked about their connections to their father and to each other:

Q: How many different bands are you guys playing with at the moment?

Mike: I’ve got (wife) Mary and I playing at Steventon’s piano bar (LeClaire, Iowa) and we’ve got the trio — we two and Hal (Whitmer, saxophonist) — every other week at the Rusty Nail and at Grumpy’s in the Village (of East Davenport) every other week.

Jim: And the Nitecrawlers. ... I play in the Nitecrawlers with Mike, also with Johnny Goldmine and the Nuggets at Cabanas (in Rock Island) and with (Johnny Goldmine leader John O’Meara’s) dad, the John O’Meara Group that plays on the Celebration Belle three or four times a month during cruise season. Also, we have a rock band, Kelli and Those Other Guys, with Dean Bryant from Nine-1-1 (and his wife Kelli). I try to balance everything.

Goldmine and the Nitecrawlers are the steady gigs, then we try to sprinkle in the others where we can.

Q: Tell me about your dad.

Jim: He and Bix grew up together and were real good friends, although Bix was a few years older than my dad. They used to go down to the old YMCA and Bix was a little further advanced and gave him a few lessons and showed him the ropes.

Both of them dropped out of school about the same time — 13, 14 years old. Dad’s dad died and he had to go out and make a living.

Mike: This was back in the early ‘20s.

Jim: Eventually, my dad moved out to New York City. He had hooked up with (orchestra leader) Jean Goldkette before he went out to New York, who Bix also played with. ... He got hooked up with one of the top vaudeville orchestras at the time.

About 1931, 1932, they were playing all the top nightclubs and stuff. My dad got to know Babe Ruth. He had box seats and stuff. As a kid, I didn’t think much of it, but as I got older, I thought, “How in the hell did he get box seats?” That’s when my sister said, “Oh yeah, he knew Babe Ruth.” Babe Ruth would come into these top establishments where these bands were playing and he would give my dad box seats.

... About 1931, my dad had to come back and be with his family. That’s when Bix was struggling.

Mike: (Bix would) come back here and sober up for a few days. When he was leaving, he could never find his horn because he’d leave his horn wherever he was playing.

Jim: He gave Louis Bellson one of his first jobs and he (Bellson) was good friends with my dad until my dad died.

Q: Do you guys feel like you’re carrying on the legacy or the family business?

Jim: My niece did a (genealogy) on our family and found musicians dating back to the late 1600s in Austria — every generation, either entertainers or musicians.

It’s definitely a family lineage.

Mike: (Dad) didn’t really want us to be in the business.

Jim: In this business, you have to sacrifice everything — your family, the whole works if you have to. He wasn’t willing to sacrifice, and that’s why he moved back.

Mike: He still played, but he came back here.

Jim: He didn’t want us to make those kinds of choices.

Mike: He wasn’t happy about it, but he didn’t tell us not to do it. By the time it got to the ‘60s, we were in some successful bands ...

Jim: ... and there was no hope.

Q: Did he ever sit around thinking what might have been?

Jim: He never talked about it. Some of this stuff we found out after he retired.

Mike: He didn’t talk too much about it.

Jim: It was all about family.

Q: How important is it for you guys to be playing out there? You guys know as well as I do there’s a handful of people in town who could say that.

Mike: I play three nights a week and he plays usually four. You’ve got to be able to play four nights a week at it.

Jim: ... None of us can tell anybody how grateful we are to all of these people who come in to hear us play. Without these people, we wouldn’t have nothing.

I’m grateful to the audience.

David Burke can be contacted at (563) 383-2400 or dburke@qctimes.com.