Bobby launched an independent career in the early 1950s working with top country and western swing bands in southern California with Spade Cooley, Tex Williams, and Jimmy Wakely on broadcasts for CBS radio.
He also played with Leon McAuliffe in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He has been seen and heard on radio and television since the early 1950s, and he had a lengthy studio career playing and composing for television and numerous motion pictures in Hollywood.īobby Bruce played dance bands and radio broadcasts with several western swing bands including Bob Wills, both in California and Texas. Bobby was a versatile musician and arranger he played vaudeville, jazz, popular music and western swing. On recommendation by people in the music business, Robert Berg changed his name to Bobby Bruce and used this as his professional name throughout his lengthy career. The Pacific Command discovered his musical talents, and at a very young age he was directing and arranging for a staff of 125 men in music ensembles in the South Pacific islands. He was in the 3rd Marine Division that saw some of the worst fighting in Guam, Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima. When World War II began, Bobby, at age 17, joined the Marine Corps and took his fiddle with him throughout the entire south Pacific campaign. Bobby learned how to perform classical music with Sammantini and learned jazz improvisation at these Chicago jazz clubs. One day while standing in the rain with his violin and listening to jazz music, the jazz musicians invited him to come in and Bobby began jazz improvisation playing with these musicians. He would take the streetcars to return home from lessons, sometimes stopping at jazz nightclubs to hear jazz musicians play. Bobby began violin lessons at age 6, and by the age of 9 he would do acrobatics, tap dance, sing and play violin on stage in a Vaudeville act called the Personality Kids on the Keith Orpheum circuit with his mother and older sister Eileen.īobby’s remarkable violin skills earned him a scholarship to the Chicago Musical College where he obtained a classical music education under one of the finest teachers in the world, Leon Sammantini. His father owned a fruit market and his mother Rosie was a comedian and entertainer, performing at several theaters in the Chicago area. Bobby Bruce (Robert Morris Berg) was born in Chicago, Illinois.
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