May 2003 Feature Story
Robert Lockwood Jr.

by Mark Hoffman

5/29, Little Bill & the Blue Notes featuring Dick Powell, Billy Stapleton, Tommy Morgan @ The Roxy Theater, Bremerton, 7pm; 5/30, Willamette Delta Showcase w/Johnny Dyer,Barry Levenson, & more @ Portland Art Museum, Portland, OR

He is one of the most influential living blues guitarists—the only one who learned to play directly from Robert Johnson, his stepfather. He was the guitarist on the famous “King Biscuit Time” radio show with Sonny Boy II, with whom he played and recorded for decades. He became a top session guitarist starting in 1941, and recorded with Doc Clayton at the Bluebird label, and with Muddy Waters, Little Walter Jacobs, The Aces, Roosevelt Sykes, Bo Diddley, Sunnyland Slim, Eddie Boyd, and many others at Chess. During the same period, he was in great demand as a sideman, performing with Jimmy Rogers, Junior Wells, Homesick James, Yank Rachell, Henry Townsend, John Brim, and Johnny Shines. Out of gratitude for all that he taught B.B. King about guitar, B.B. sends him an expensive Christmas gift every year. He received the very first Handy award, has been nominated for multiple Grammies, received a National Heritage Fellowship Award (plus two honorary doctorates in music), and was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame. He’s also a member of the Delta Blues Cartel: four legendary bluesmen that fans treat like royalty at festivals worldwide…

I’m talking, of course, about Robert Lockwood, the ageless artist has two rare NW appearances in May. If there’s one player you should hear to further your musical education in this Year of the Blues, it’s this man. They just don’t make ’em like Lockwood anymore. Born in the Arkansas Delta in 1915, Lockwood was within a 100-mile radius that year of Willie Dixon, Little Walter, Memphis Slim, Johnny Shines, and Honeyboy Edwards. Lockwood learned guitar at age 11 from the mysterious Robert Johnson, who came home with his mother one day and refused to leave. He played on “King Biscuit Time” with Sonny Boy II until 1943, and then starred on his own show. He traveled as the guitarist with B.B. King (to whom he suggested an 8-piece backup band, which became B.B.’s trademark sound), Little Walter, and Muddy Waters. In 1960, Lockwood moved to Cleveland, Ohio (which recently named a street for him), started a family, and “retired” from music. In the 70s, he came back as a soloist and bandleader, and he’s been playing his sophisticated, jazz-inflected blues continuously since, mostly with long-time bass player Gene Schwartz. At 88, he continues to be a force in music, and plays like a man generations younger. The Roxy is two blks fr: ferry. www.wsdot.gov/ferries

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