Floore Family History - Robbie and The Troubadours, A New York Band Playing On Rush Street In Chicago - Interview With Barry Goldberg



My brother-in-law Robbie. A nice man. A loving father. A talented singer. A shatered career. A tragic life.

Bloomfield notes: You were born in Chicago.

Barry Goldberg: I was born in Chicago in 1942.

Bn: How did you get involved in music?

BG: I started out playing piano. Actually drums was my first instrument. My mother is a pianist and singer. She used to be on the Yiddish stage in Chicago. She played all the parts that Molly Picon played in New York. She was a child actress. She's quite an accomplished barrelhouse piano player. So she taught me a little bit about it and I basically picked it up by ear.

Bn: How did you get turned on to blues music?

BG: I had listened to the blues, although I was more into rhythm-and-blues at the time, and rock-and-roll. But I also listened to Jam With Sam on the radio. He was the last station on the dial. He had a show at 12 o'clock midnight. Little Walter's "Blue Light" was the theme song. He'd say, "We're gonna go down to the basement now and turn on this blue light, sit down on this orange crate and just dig some blues."

They were conjuring up the spirits. And I was just 14 or 15 years old listening to this show on the North Side in my building, which had an elevator man, and a guy polishing the brass everyday, and I'm listening to this shit on the radio. No one even knew I was listening to it. I had a little transistor radio. And I heard those weird and scary sounds. Things would be unleashed in the music and I could feel the excitement. I couldn't really tell -- it was wild and uncontrollable. It was very mystical. Those sounds -- Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, all those guys.

Bn: You went to high school with Mike.

BG: All during high school we had rival bands on the North Side. He had a really hot rock-and-roll band with a piano player. We were always competitive, playing for sweet sixteen parties and everything, and we would bump into each other. I remember his piano player, a guy named George Demus. I had to play the piano after he played it, and he used to put Vaseline on the keyboard so he could do his Jerry Lee Lewis thing.

We were both gaining reputations already. I played in the house band at a place called Teenland when I was 16. It was a club for teenagers. They didn't serve alcohol. The guitar player was Jimmy Guercio. He was 14.

I had to leave home actually, because I wasn't allowed to play rock-and-roll. So I left home and I slept in the basement of this nightclub, and finally the owners let me stay at their house. I really wanted to play. We backed up people that would come in, Johnny Tillotson, Ral Donner, people like that.

So I played around, and eventually I went back to school. And then both Michael and I were thrown out of our respective high schools, and we wound up at Central YMCA High School downtown. We would say "hello" and see each other in the hallways and talk about the music scene. He talked to me about the blues clubs. There were three hot guitar players on the North Side of Chicago, at 15 and 16 years old, and Michael was one of them.

Bn: What happened after you left high school?

BG: At 18 I started playing on Rush Street, which is like the Bourbon Street of Chicago, y'know, nightclubs with red velvet. I'd play with a New York based band that came to Chicago and caused a sensation during the twist era. We were playing songs by James Brown and Joey D. and the Starlighters. They had come from The Peppermint Lounge in New York. They were called Robbie And The Troubadours.



Michael and Paul Butterfield would come down there, and all my friends from high school, and it was like a really big deal. Y'know it was a really plush club with Playboy bunny type waitresses. Quite the scene -- a Damon Runyon kind of thing. They were blown away by this whole scene. We'd have different color uniforms, and dye our hair different colors every night, and do Jackie Wilson songs, "Tossing And Turning," "Outasite," James Brown tunes, and it would blow Paul's mind, and Michael's mind, and they would come and sit in with us. And then we'd go out with the Playboy bunnies. (The place was the Tony Paris Show Lounge on Rush Street. Bobby Hull and the Blackhawk players were frequent patrons. Most celebrities visiting Chicago came to this happening nightclub. Robbie was the band leader. Mary was a waitress. They met. They dated. They married. They had two wonderful children. They are part of the Floore Family History. Mary went to Tuley High School; the same school Walt Disney attended. Mary was a regular dancer on the Chicago version of American Bandstand which was broadcast from Philadelphia.)

Robby Vidone, God bless you.
Rest in peace.






Robbie and Mary's children Gidget and Robin with Jill and Tommy.



Jerry, Pat, and Mary.

Too many to name, but that is Randy with her two children. Her husband Chuck must have taken this picture.

A happy time for Robbie and Mary.



An aluminum tree that was popular in the 70s.



Robin, Tommy, Jill, and Gidget.



Robin! Shape up!



How cute are they? That tree is enormous now. That tree is chopped down now!



Mary's living room. The kids playing Kiss songs.



A winter moment.



A walk out on Cross Lake. Tommy and Spencer fish right at this spot.