Robert Lockwood Jr.

Inspired and taught by his legendary step-father Robert Johnson, Robert Lockwood Jr. spent a great deal of his life struggling to avoid the comparison and would met requests to hear him play Johnson’s material with a scowl. Yet he would play the songs with an eerie precision, the sort of exactness that felt otherworldly. Despite his eternal tie to the man ‘who sold his soul’ at the crossroads to become the most enigmatic bluesman to have ever lived, Lockwood had developed his own unmistakable style and throughout his career became one of the most adept and skillful of the Delta blues players.
Lockwood was born on March 27th, 1915 in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas (a small town outside of Helena). He began his musical education learning to play the organ in his father’s church at the age of 8. After his parents divorce, his mother Ester met and lived with the famous bluesman Robert Johnson. According to Lockwood, “He (Johnson) followed my mama home. She couldn’t get rid of him. He wouldn’t leave.” Johnson lived off and on with Ester and Robert Jr. for 10 years and during that time Lockwood gave up the organ for the guitar once he heard Johnson playing around the house. “When I seen what Robert was doing, I said, “That’s what I want to do.” I knew I never heard anything like it, and I knew it sounded real good.’ Johnson took to Lockwood as a father figure despite the fact that he was only 4 years older than the boy.
Lockwood recalled in an interview late in his life. “Robert was like a father to me, or a big brother and he accepted me like a baby brother or a son. He was real open with me, and he had me playin’ inside of six months.” Lockwood said that Johnson even helped him make his first guitar out of a cigar box, an old Victrola, a cheese box and assorted pieces of wood. The relationship with Ester and Robert Jr. were likely the longest and deepest relationships of Johnson’s life.
By the age of 15 Lockwood had begun his professional music career playing local jukes, house parties and work camps in and around the Helena, Arkansas countryside with harp player Sonny Boy Williamson II (Rice Miller).
Lockwood migrated to Memphis for a time in the mid-30’s where he caught some work with a young Howlin’ Wolf. From Memphis he moved onto St. Louis where he met with boogie piano player Clarence ‘Cripple’ Lofton. His time with Lofton was quite instructional to the young guitarist as he began to learn the rudiments of playing in a band setting. He made a trip to Chicago where Lockwood recorded 4 sides for the Bluebird label backing singer Doc Clayton.
After his brief recording career in Chicago, Lockwood returned to Helena where he again hooked up again with Sonny Boy Williamson II who was at the time in the process of building up the King Biscuit Time, a 15 minute live music radio show broadcast on KFFA from the King Biscuit Flour Company in Helena. Lockwood appeared countless times on the show playing behind some of the blues biggest names. He has claimed that he was one of the first of the bluesmen to introduce the electric guitar to the Delta through his use of it on the show.
Lockwood also began playing local gigs as a band member with the King Biscuit Boys in the Helena, Arkansas and Memphis, Tennessee areas. Although at the time Lockwood was also working on his solo career, grabbing solo gigs, as they would become available.
By 1950, Lockwood had returned to Chicago, this time permanently, and quickly became one of the most sought after sidemen in the business. While working as part of the house band at Chess Records, Lockwood can be heard on recordings by Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, Sunnyland Slim, Eddie Boyd and Walter Mabon. As so many of the cadre’ of blues players in the Chess side player stable, Lockwood was also occasionally recording on his own for competing labels. In 1951 he recorded ‘I’m Gonna Dig Myself A Grave’ and a very early version of ‘Dust My Broom’ for Mercury. In 1955 he recorded ‘Sweet Woman From Maine’ and ‘Aw Aw Baby’ for JOB Records.
Lockwood’s time with Chess, although steady work, was not without controversy and Lockwood was outspoken practically until his death about how he was ‘cheated’ out of royalties by Chess. In an interview in 1994, Lockwood said ‘The Chess brothers were a little afraid of me because I was outspoken. Most of the blues singers were kinda uneducated, so maybe they didn’t know when they were being shorted.’
In 1961 Lockwood relocated from Chicago to Cleveland with Sonny Boy Williamson and remained there making it is home even after Williamson split the country for Europe. By the mid-60’s, Lockwood had left the Chess label and began recording for Trix. At this time he was recording some important and innovative tracks using a 12-string electric guitar. Lockwood is often credited with bringing the twelve string electric to the blues.
In 1970, Lockwood recorded his first album as a bandleader for Delmark, ‘Steady Rollin’ Man.’ Delmark had asked for covers of his famous stepfathers recordings and other old blues standards. Lockwood delivered what Delmark had asked for and included two of his own originals. The album stands today as a classic blues disc and well worth a listen.
He and his band, The All-stars, continued to record for Trix throughout the 70’s all the while maintaining standing gigs around Cleveland. In the late 70’s and early 80’s Lockwood hooked up with fellow Delta bluesman and Robert Johnson devotee, Johnny Shines, for a pair of electric blues albums for Rounder, 1979’s ‘Hanging On’ and 1980’s ‘Mr. Blues Is Back To Stay.’ In 1998 Lockwood signed with Verve Records and released his Grammy nominated ‘Gotta Get Me A Woman,’ which included appearances by B.B. King (Lockwood was one of King’s guitar instructors early in Kings career back in Arkansas during the King Biscuit Flour Hour. He once said that he told B.B. to use horns in his band to, according to Lockwood, to mask King’s bad timing) and Joe Louis Walker. In 2000, he received a Grammy nomination for his work on the album ‘Delta Crossroads.’
Lockwood continued to gig weekly until November 2006 when he suffered a brain aneurism. He passed away on November 21, 2006. His blues lineage aside, Robert Lockwood Jr. never received the national recognition he truly deserved in his lifetime as a blues player. His work on some of the seminal work being done at the Chess recording studios in Chicago in the 50’s, including his unique jazz phrasing and chord changes, will has welded Lockwood well into blues history. There are countless blues players, both professionally and amateur, who can cite him as an influence from these recordings even if they didn’t know whom it was they were listening to at the time. He brought a sense of jazz to his blues, his own sphere of influence being as broad as the Delta soul of Robert Johnson to the single electric jazz leads of Charlie Christian and the boogie blast of Clarence Lofton, Sunnyland Slim and Otis Spann.
In a true sense of the blues, Robert Lockwood Jr. found himself struggling for a lifetime trying to escape the lineage that, in a sense, brought him his initial brush with fame; a lineage that he both honored and protected and yet tried to hide from at the same time.