Music Pick: Win Stracke

Winfred "Win" Stracke (1908-1991) was a Chicago entertainment legend in music, theater and TV in from the 1930's to the 1990's. Born in Kansas, Stracke moved to Chicago as a child and spent his entire life associated with the Old Town neighborhood. In 1931 he joined the famed National Barn Dance on WLS radio. In 1938 he met Chicago writer and raconteur Studs Terkel in the ...progressive Chicago Repertory Theater. They remained lifelong cohorts in progressive politics and entertainment. In 1949 Stracke became one of Studs three permanent cast members in his groundbreaking TV show "Studs Place", a live, unscripted weekly show set in a neighborhood Chicago bar that was so realistic tourists sought out its location to frequent. Studs Place was Cheers without booze and much better. Sadly, Studs and Win's progressive politics ran them afoul of the McCarthyites. The show was cancelled and both were blacklisted from TV for years. In 1956 Stracke co-founded the Old Town School of Folk Music, likely the first venture of its kind which has trained tens of thousands of folk artists over the past 58 years. The feature "43rd Ward" is one of Stracke's signature songs, a valentine to his beloved Old Town. I heard him sing it at the long gone "Fifth Peg" folk club at Armitage and Daman back in 1971. Stracke was opening act for new folk singer songwriter sensation John Prine, the Maywood Mailman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRVqXjGogrI