Robert Lockwood Jr one of the last of the great Missisippi Delta Bluesmen dies at 91

[GI Joe]

This man was a true musical legend and a friend of mine. I met him through a friend of mine,his son Maurice. I had the pleasure and honor of seeing him play dozens and dozens of times including at his home.

The world is a little darker without him in it. I will miss him

Robert Lockwood Jr., Cleveland's great bluesman, dies at 91
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
John Soeder
Plain Dealer Pop Music Critic

Grammy Award-nominated bluesman Robert Lockwood Jr., one of the last direct links to the primal blues of the Mississippi Delta and a popular fixture on Cleveland's music scene for decades, died of respiratory failure Tuesday afternoon at University Hospitals Case Medical Center. He was 91.

The singer-guitarist had been in the hospital since he suffered a stroke Nov. 3.

Lockwood "was a giant of American musicians," said his friend Nick Amster. "He was extremely influential."

Lockwood was born in Turkey Scratch, Ark. He moved to Cleveland in 1960.

When he was 11, Lockwood began taking guitar lessons from legendary blues pioneer Robert Johnson, a drifter who briefly moved in with Lockwood's mother.

"He never showed me nothing two times," Lockwood said in a 2005 interview. "After I got the foundation of the way he played, everything was easy."

Lockwood honed his chops on street corners and in juke joints.

He later became a musical mentor to B.B. King, who used to listen to Lockwood in the 1940s on the "King Biscuit Time" radio show broadcast out of Helena, Ark.

Lockwood relocated to Chicago in the 1950s, where he was a sought-after session musician for Chess Records. He recorded with Little Walter, Sunnyland Slim, Roosevelt Sykes and other blues musicians.

Lockwood developed his own sound, going beyond the Mississippi Delta style he learned from Johnson to embrace jump blues, jazz and even funk.

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1164189449118180.xml&coll=2

[GI Joe]

Robert Lockwood Jr. Expanded The Spectrum of the Blues

By Terence McArdle
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 23, 2006; Page C01

I once asked the great bluesman Robert Lockwood Jr., who died Tuesday at age 91, for guitar lessons. It was 1986. I was 25, and it took all of my youthful gumption to do it. A few minutes earlier, I had just witnessed Lockwood dismissing a man who requested an interview.

"I've been recording since 1941," he said. "I don't need the publicity."

On that summer day, Lockwood was standing in the hot sun beside an outdoor concert stage at the Prince George's Equestrian Center; a chain-link fence separated him from his fans. I told Lockwood that I wanted to learn to fingerpick. I had family in Toledo and could drive out to his home in Cleveland to take lessons. Did he ever give guitar lessons?

"Sure, I've taught guitar. I taught Louis Myers, Luther Tucker, M.T. Murphy, B.B. King," he said, managing to give me the polite brushoff and establish his credentials at the same time.

"Tell you what," he said. "You go to a music store and learn classical guitar. Then you can play any type of music."

I was dumbstruck. Classical guitar? That suggestion could have come directly from my mother's mouth. It seemed a world apart from Lockwood's own background, but he always liked to defy expectations.


Among the giants of Delta and Chicago blues, Robert Lockwood Jr. may have been the last of the greats, having outlived Muddy Waters, Jimmy Rogers and John Lee Hooker.

He learned at age 11 directly from the itinerant blues singer Robert Johnson, who had become romantically involved with Lockwood's widowed mother in Helena, Ark. By 15, Lockwood was playing juke joints and fish fries throughout Mississippi and Arkansas with Johnson.


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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/22/AR2006112202088.html

[GI Joe]

Robert Lockwood Jr.; Disciple Of Blues Legend Robert Johnson

Robert Lockwood Jr., 91, a Delta blues guitarist who became the torchbearer of Robert Johnson's guitar legacy and a revered musician in his own right, died Nov. 21 at University Hospitals Case Medical Center in Cleveland. He had a brain aneurysm and a stroke.

Few guitarists had the enduring mystique of Johnson, a hard-living, hard-loving musician who created soulful blues landmarks before his death at 27 from poisoned whiskey.

Growing up in rural Arkansas, Mr. Lockwood learned guitar fundamentals from Johnson, who also functioned as an occasional stepfather although there was only a four-year age difference.

A professional musician at 15, Mr. Lockwood reached wider audiences through radio work in the early 1940s from a station in Helena, Ark. One listener, B.B. King, became Mr. Lockwood's pupil, and years later Mr. Lockwood advised the addition of horns to King's band to disguise his imperfect sense of keeping time.


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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/22/AR2006112201783.html

[GI Joe]

Robert Lockwood, Jr. in his own words

Blues legend Robert Lockwood, Jr. shares his music and memories with Dick Russ in March, 2002, on Lockwood's 87th birthday.
Robert Lockwood, Jr., gets comfortable on a couch in the living room of his home on Cleveland's east side, the same Lawnview Avenue house he's been living in for decades.

He offers his guest a taste of genuine southern moonshine, just in from somewhere in Alabama. "That's good stuff," the blues legend opines, and proceeds on to a few bars of "C.C. Rider."

"See, I started to play music when I was eight years old. I started playing guitar at 13, and the guy who taught me is on that wall right over there, Robert Johnson."

Lockwood points across the room to a large poster of Johnson, his stepfather and first teacher. "He was way ahead of his time, so when he taught me to play he put me way ahead of my time."

"He played harmony and melody all at the same time on the guitar." Robert Junior duplicates his teacher's skill. "And that's hard to do."

At 87, the blues master is comfortable with his guest, who grew up only six blocks away. In fact they had the same house number in this east side neighborhood.

"That's a fact!" Lockwood chuckles, "but you weren't much more than a kid when I came up here." The musician had moved to Cleveland from Chicago in 1960. He was born in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas.

The tunes continue as the great guitarist starts to talk about his genuinely good health at 87. "I eat all the right kind of foods. I try to do the right things for my body."

"You have to work at it. You have to take care of yourself." Lockwood boasts he does dozens of pushups and knee-bends each day.

"Music had something to do with it, becuase if it don't be for music, I'd be square as a brick!"

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http://www.wkyc.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=59673