Quad-Cities Music Legend Mike Stroehle, Night People Founder, Passes Away
The original Night People lineup, including Mike Stroehle, Rob Dahms, Dick Collignon and Kenny White.
Mike Stroehle, a founding member of the legendary Quad-Cities rock group The Night People, which opened for Jimi Hendrix at the height of his fame in 1968, passed away Sunday after a bad fall on the steps outside his home. Stroehle was 75.
According to a post on his Facebook page by his son, Mike, the elder Mike was flown to Iowa City for possible brain surgery but the injury was too severe. “He hung on long enough for (his other son) Joe and I to get there and say goodbye,” his son posted. “It’s been really tough as he was so great to his kids and was such a huge part of our lives. The good news is he is finally free of the misery his body has given him
Mike Stroehle and Rob Dahms in 1965, during the heyday of The Night People.
during his final 11 years. The other great news is they have already found a recipient for his liver. Can you believe that? A 75 year old lifelong musician had a liver still in perfect condition!”
Stroehle had continued playing throughout the years, but he was best known for his work with the mega-popular local group The Night People, who formed in 1964 with Stroehle on keyboards and vocals, his cousin Rob Dahms on guitar and vocals, Dick Collignon on drums and Kenny White (later Gary Pearson) on bass. The group was inducted into the Iowa Rock ‘n’ Roll Music Association Hall of Fame in 2017, which was also the last time the original members had all reunited to play live.
The group got together as teenagers, playing covers of bands popular at the time, including the Beatles, Byrds, Kinks and Rolling Stones. They amassed a huge following, particularly after becoming the house band at the typically packed dive bar The Draught House, which ultimately evolved into The Dock restaurant on River Drive in Davenport.
The Night People in 1968.
The Night People’s original lineup split up in the ’70s, and members continued to play in different bands, reuniting with each other periodically. Dahms went to California for almost three decades, playing with acts like Freddy Fender and Bill Medley. Collignon ended up settling in the Pacific Northwest around Seattle. However, Stroehle and Pearson in particular continued to play together in various musical permutations throughout the decades, and both stayed active on the local music scene, gigging regularly. One of those incarnations was as The Night People, who still continued to draw at local clubs.
The original band went their separate directions across the country, but those original members continued to reunite for shows periodically over the years, including dates at the Adler Theater and LeClaire Park Bandshell, among other spots, in 1984, 1990 and 2017. The group played for over 3,000 fans at the Adler and over 10,000 at LeClaire outdoors.
“It’s strange in a lot of ways that people still come out to see us play,” Stroehle said, when I interviewed him before the last gig, celebrating the group’s induction into the Iowa Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. “It’s like a big huge high school reunion.”
“We just wanted to play,” Stroehle said, about the band forming. “And years later, it’s still the same, we just want to play and have people enjoy our music.”
Stroehle grew up in a musical household, as his father, Joe, had grown up with and played in bands with Bix Beiderbecke, and had set up gigs for Louie Bellson.
The Night People in 2017, in front of the former Draught House, then The Dock.
the Beatles had exploded across America and the British Invasion was inspiring countless American teens to take up instruments and hit the stage, Stroehle and Dahms decided they were going to do the same, getting together with their friends, Pearson and Collignon to play covers at house parties and the YMCA. When The Draught House reopened after a flood and was looking for bands, the newly dubbed The Night People stepped up, and before long were the house band, playing for packed houses of over 1,000 people, and famously traveling to gigs in a renovated 1953 Packard hearse.
“It was a wild time,” Stroehle said, looking back, “it was a really fun time.”
The group was particularly famous for getting records before they would even hit the local airwaves, at the time on KSTT, and learning them just as the songs were becoming popular, giving fans the experience of hearing the current hits live, even though the original bands themselves were typically overseas in their native UK.
But Stroehle kept playing around the Quad-Cities, sometimes under the Night People moniker with fellow members, and other times as a solo act, a duo, or with other bands. In the last decade, he and Pearson would go to nursing homes and play for some of the same folks who had come out to watch them during their heyday in the ’60s, and those people would share their memories with them, and relive the joy their early band had given to so many people around the Quad-Cities.
It was a time that will never be forgotten for those who experienced it, and Stroehle was a man and a musician who will never be forgotten by those who were close to him.
