In his 2010 song “Nakleng Wiinga,” or “Poor Me,” Robert J.M. "Bobby" Gregory sings about sitting at the post office in Bethel waiting for a check to show up. The pilot bread, butter, and sugar have almost run out. There’s no money for bingo.
“When I go to church, I’ll have no offering, but be sure to pray for me. I’m just going to sit here,” Gregory sings in Yugtun.
Gregory, known to most as Bobby, passed away on June 8 at his home in Anchorage just weeks short of his 69th birthday. At his memorial service, friends and family shared some of his songs and spoke about his lifelong love of music and mastery of the guitar. He was hailed at the memorial as the Jimi Hendrix of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
Longtime friend Peter Twitchell, whose musical collaborations with Gregory go back 50 years, said “Nakleng Wiinga” is a perfect example of how Gregory expressed the real-life experiences of people of the region.
"He wrote about the times, you know, because when I was living in Bethel I used to go to the post office, and all these Elders were just sitting there on the floor, and I was wondering, what's going on here?" Twitchell said. "Now I know they were waiting for their Social Security check like I do. And Bobby wrote about that. And that's what grabbed people, because he was singing about reality."
Twitchell, who established himself as a bass player, said that Gregory was just 15 years old when they started playing as a trio in the early 1970s at the long since demolished Wild Goose restaurant on the Bethel riverfront.
"I asked Bobby, 'What do you think we should call the band?' And he said, 'We could call ourselves the Bootleggers.' And then he started laughing. I said, 'Okay, we'll be the Bootleggers,'" Twitchell said.
In the years that followed, Twitchell said that Gregory became a hot commodity among local players for his uncanny abilities on the guitar.
"He was a natural. Any guitar player in the world that's great, that was Bobby. He was right there," Twitchell said.
Gregory became someone people wanted around for other reasons as well. There was money to be made in multi-day hoedowns, known as fiddle dances, that filled a demand for live music in villages across the region. The country, rock, and bluegrass standards they offered up also filled a large part of Gregory’s musical career, even taking him to Greenland to perform in 2010. But they weren’t the whole story.
In his self-produced track recorded sometime in the mid-1980s, “Look at What They Did to My Hometown,” Gregory railed against the ravages of alcohol in his community, even as he struggled with his own addiction.
His production techniques were primitive – bouncing guitar and vocal tracks back and forth between two cassette decks, stomping on a microphone stand – but his methods were meticulous.
“At the Corporation” offered more biting social commentary, this time on the nepotism Gregory perceived in the Alaska Native corporations that formed when he was a teenager. Friends like Don Rearden said that Gregory’s music was something no one else was doing at the time.
"He was my first introduction to a local artist who was making art, but also, you know, making political statements. No one else was really doing that out there," Rearden said.
On Friday nights on KYUK in the early 1990s, “The Kevin, Ralph, and Don Show” gave Rearden and his friends a platform to get Gregory’s songs on the airwaves.
The enduring hit “Pretty Yup’ik Girl,” one of their favorite tracks, had already been in the rotation at KYUK for years.
Gregory’s compositions made people laugh, made people think, and when he sang in his native Yup’ik language on tracks like “Steam Bath Song,” offered a deeper meaning and sense of pride for the people of the region.
Gregory’s life, like many of the guitar legends he drew comparisons to, was full of turbulence and struggle. Some friends said that he could have done much more with his music. Others cherish memories of meeting up with him in Bethel to exchange a couple canisters of coffee for a mixtape of his songs dubbed on the spot.
Twitchell, who was there where it all started in the bygone era referred to as the Wild Goose days, said that music was at the core of Gregory’s life.
"Bobby had strength in his music. He could sing an Eskimo song that he wrote, probably in an hour, and make people feel good. And I know he felt good about what he did, what he accomplished," Twitchell said.
Gregory was the proud father of six surviving children, and is also survived by his mother, Mary Gregory, and four siblings. He was preceded in death by his father, Paul Gregory Sr., and brother Walter Dean Gregory.
"Nakleng Wiinga" (Poor Me)
"Steam Bath Song"
*translations by Julia Jimmie
*all songs written and recorded by Robert Gregory, except for "Nakleng Wiinga," written by Robert Gregory and recorded by Mike McIntyre.
