Blues R&B band featuring Steve Kraemer (vocals, piano, guitar), Mark Korpi (guitar, vocals), Gary Breezee (drums), Winston Roland (bass ex-Almost Blues Band), Richard ‘Dr. Harp’ Lowenstein (harmonica), Alex Coke (tenor sax), and Tim Chambers (baritone sax). This lineup released a single in 1981. The original WildCards harp player was Lazy Lenny Rabenovetz. He was briefly replaced with ‘Dr. Harp’ before returning to the group. Daryl Davis played piano for the group for about a year.
The group disbanded on Thanksgiving Eve 1983 after they were rear-ended on Rt. 2 in Pasadena coming back from a gig at the Brickhouse. The gas tank in the van ignited. Everyone got out safely but the equipment was destroyed.
Members went their own ways. Notably, Korpi later worked with Gary Primmich and Evan John.
In 1984 Kraemer began playing piano every Sunday at the Cat’s Eye Pub in Fells Point. The first few years he was accompanied with Lazy Lenny. Lenny quit after he got married, but later got back into music playing with Automatic Slim’s band. He passed away in 2006.
Kraemer continued at the Cat’s Eye as a solo until 1991, when Glenn Moomau joined on harp. The following year they added drummer Phil Cunneff who had been better known as a jazz musician. Once a month Kraemer led his full band, The Bluesicians, which augmented Moomau with Bob Swenson (guitar), Bryan Smith or John Combs (bass), and Jeff Ludson (replacing Phil, on drums). Steve and this group had worked together in the late ’70s as the Childe Harold (D.C.) Tuesday night house band. By the mid-‘90s they began using a bass player weekly, with Steve Potter becoming the full-time bassist around 2000.
The group Dr. Steve Kraemer & the Bluesicians, with Moomau, Cunneff, and Potter recorded at David Earl’s Severn Studio in spring 2002, releasing their all-original CD “Money Don’t Hurt.”
Moomau and his group the Blue Flames, with an occasional guest appearance of Kraemer on guitar, performed weekends at Bertha’s.
The WildCards:
1981 Moonlyte 2183 Hey Now / Baby Come Back
Dr. Steve Kraemer & the Bluesicians:
2002(CD) Money Don’t Hurt
