Memories of Robert Lockwood Jr.
William E. Donoghue
(Turkey Scratch Arkansas March 27, 1915-Cleveland Ohio November 21.2006)
His name was Robert Lockwood Jr. after his father and he always insisted
that Robert Lockwood Jr. was the way he wanted to be addressed or placed on
the bill because that was his proper name.
He was named after his father Robert Lockwood although he barely knew him.
Others insisted on referring to him affectionately as "Robert Jr." due to
the fact he was not only the stepson (Johnson lived with his mother and him
from the early 1930s until the time of his death) of blues legend Robert
Johnson and the only man who Robert Johnson ever taught personally to play
his music and his unique guitar style but the man who carried his torch and
performed Robert Johnson's music frequently.
He first recorded in 1941 alone and with Dr. Clayton's band for Okeh and
then not again until 1949 for Mercury after he had figured out how the
business worked. However during the 1940s he encouraged Muddy Waters and
others to record several of the Robert Johnson songs, thus keeping the
Johnson catalog alive. It's hard to remember how short Johnson's recording
career was. By December 1938 only six of his 78s were in the RCA catalog.
More importantly, Robert Jr. was the band leader in the Chess studios and
serve as band leader for Eddie Boyd, Little Walter ("My Babe") and Jimmy
Rogers ("Walking By Myself" which Robert wrote) and also first played with
Sonny Boy Williamson before at the beginning of the King Biscuit Time show
on KFFA in Helena Arkansas. Robert Jr. and Sonny Boy II were playing
electric blues through car radios and juke boxes in the delta six years
before Muddy Waters owned an electric guitar. Reunited in the Chess Studios
with Sonny Boy, he was featured on Sonny Boy's hits "Keep It To Yourself,"
"Fattening Frogs For Snakes." "Cross My Heart" and "Born Blind ("Eyesight to
the blind" remake)," "Your funeral and my trial," "Wake Up Baby" and others.
His move to Cleveland (on a planned trip to New York which never
materialized after he met his first wife Annie) in the early 1960s put an
end to his Chess careers.
For a time in the 1960s he drove a delivery truck for a drug store in
Cleveland because the Beatles and British artists whose music he inspired
had basically put an end to the blues in America. His career was restarted
several times and was flourishing in recent years. He was a hard-working
performer respected by the many blues musicians who visited "the master"
when they came through Cleveland OH, a sound and savvy businessman and a
good husband to his last wife Mary who obviously loved him for a very long
time. I had the pleasure to come to Sunday dinner with Robert Jr., Mary and
their large family whose hospitality and cooking was legendary.
One of my favorite stories he told me was about that time he was delivering
prescriptions to a black family in a predominantly white building. The young
boy living there was complaining that every time he got into the pool the
white boys got out and wouldn't play with him. Robert Jr. thought for a
minute and told the boy, "Next time you go to the pool, just get in the pool
and stay there. They'll come in with you eventually." A couple of days later
the boy had applied Robert Jr.'s strategy and sure enough, it worked. Robert
Jr. didn't complain, he just quietly asserted his human rights and got
things done. His dignity shone throughout his life.
I met him when I was working on a biography of Sonny Boy Williamson II (Alex
"Rice" Miller"). I knew that without Robert's input, there would be a huge
gap in Sonny Boy's story. Seeking an interview, I encountered a quoted fee
for an interview well outside my budget. I didn't give up and talked with
him informally on several occasions. Four years later his son called me out
of the blue and said "Dad wants you to write his biography." A few weeks
later, I read the draft of Chapter 1 to Robert Jr. in his hotel room in
Chicago. It was both a thrill and a very scary experience to read a blues
legend the beginning of the story of his life the first time I met him. He
only changed one word and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Over the next few years, I recorded about 30 hours of audio interviews in
his Cleveland OH home and on two fateful days we visited five cities in the
Mississippi Delta and videotaped Robert telling me his best stories in some
of the cities where they happened. He had his custom cobalt blue electric
twelve-string guitar with him and I was able to provide him with a portable
amplifier lent by Morse Gist, owner of the music store in Helena. He loved
the sound of the nine-battery amplifier and I arranged for him to receive it
as his Christmas present from me that year. Other visits to Tunica MS, and
Brinkley AR added new stories. His fondness for Robert Johnson ("He gave me
my career.") precluded visiting the then two supposed gravesites. Later when
I discovered the real gravesite of Robert Johnson by finding the widow of
the man who actually dug the grave, I called Robert to tell him where Robert
was buried. His wife agreed with me the site at Little Zion Church outside
on Greenwood MS made sense because the only way Johnson, a blues man, could
have been buried in a church graveyard was with a sponsor and this church
was very close to the plantation on which Sonny Boy II had grown up and
preached as "Reverend Blue" when he was a child. Surprisingly, Robert Jr.
had never known where the mysterious Sonny Boy was from or that he had 20
siblings!
That trip we visited Turkey Scratch (where he was born) and found his
schoolhouse from when he was five. I asked him the difference between living
in Turkey Scratch and the larger city of Helena Arkansas to which he
answered, "When I lived in Turkey Scratch, I got a beating if I got into a
fight; when I lived in Helena I got a beating if I didn't get into a fight!"
Sitting in the hot Turkey Scratch sun he marveled at white people working
the fields on a tractor as if he had never seen white people do that kind of
work.
In Helena, later that day, he set up his guitar across the street from when
the home he had grown up in back in the 1930s with Robert Johnson and played
"Sweet Home Chicago" for us. When I complimented him on what a moving
performance it was, he replied, "Don't you understand? If it's good it's
been here first."
We traveled to Clarksdale MS where he found the bridge he had play on with
Robert Johnson. The two arrived early one Saturday AM in 1936, split up and
played Robert Johnson songs on both ends of the bridge. No one knew which
the real Robert Johnson was. Robert Jr. came back within 40 cents of Robert
Johnson. We set up Robert Jr. in the middle of the bridge on a 110 degree
day. The Sunflower River was at low ebb and a lovely dark green which in the
heat almost produced a water color-like background.
With only enough tape to record one more song, Robert suggested Johnson's
"Stop Breaking Down." As he closed his eyes and drifted back to 1936 he
sang, "Stop Breakin' down, this stuff I got gonna break your mind," his had
slid to the top of the 12-string guitar's neck and dropped effortlessly to
ring three harmonics. It was one of those magical moments that I never saw
him recreate as perfectly as that day. It almost gave us whiplash as we
quietly marveled at his skill and feeling. He opened his eyes to see three
little schoolgirls who had walked buy and witnessed the moment.
Robert Jr. was an amazing musician who had never descended into drugs or
booze as did so many bluesmen. He was a dignified ultimate professional.
"They called me Mr. Lockwood" in Helena Arkansas back in the 1930s when
blacks were often called "boy" and expected to step off the curb to make way
for a while person.
He had a dry sense of humor. When Johnson would teach him a guitar lick, he
would often describe his reaction as "I was on that like a duck on a bug."
When flying back from Europe time the plane hit an air pocket and dropped in
altitude, "It got so quiet," he told me, "You could hear the saints piss on
cotton."
Until the very end at age 91, this blues legend was playing new licks on old
tunes. He never got into the popular trends like slide guitar or playing
like Buddy Guy or B. B. King as so many do to please the audience. He stuck
with his 12-string electric like the one which his late wife Annie bought
him. He seldom told his story between songs as others might have. He just
played them in his unique way in his unique timeless guitar style.
With Robert Townsend passing recently only Honeyboy Edwards, Homesick James,
and Pinetop Perkins remain from the legendary "Class of 1915." The world is
losing the first person contact with the early days of the blues.
He was much more than a relic of another time and place, he was a man of
great dignity and a quiet role model for all of us..
William E. Donoghue AKA 'fessor Mojo
Seattle WA
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Gregory Johnson
Thanks so much for sharing this chronological history of Mr. Lockwood with us. I remember Mr. Lockwood telling me the exact same story about the bridge in Clarksdale. I can still hear him in detail as he relayed it.
Obviously you meant Henry Townsend, not Robert. Understandable after reciting the life of Robert for so long in the narrative. I only have one question, "The Class of 1915" I understood to be the long list of notable bluesmen that had been born in the single year. But I thought Homesick James was born in 1910 and Pinetop in 1913. I know there is often disagreement amongst birth years or new information that indicates different than years given before. Is this true with James and Perkins. I know Honeyboy was 1915.
Thanks,
Greg
----- Original Message -----
From: William E. Donoghue<mailto:gu...@nwlink.com>
To: BLU...@LISTS.NETSPACE.ORG<mailto:BLU...@LISTS.NETSPACE.ORG>
Sent: Friday, November 24, 2006 10:05 PM
Subject: Memories of Robert Lockwood Jr.
With Robert Townsend passing recently only Honeyboy Edwards, Homesick James,
and Pinetop Perkins remain from the legendary "Class of 1915." The world is
losing the first person contact with the early days of the blues.
Blues-L web site: http://www.netspace.org/~blues-l/
E Willett
George
----- Original Message -----
From: William E. Donoghue<mailto:gu...@nwlink.com>
To: BLU...@LISTS.NETSPACE.ORG<mailto:BLU...@LISTS.NETSPACE.ORG>
Sent: Saturday, November 25, 2006 1:05 AM
Subject: Memories of Robert Lockwood Jr.
Robert Lockwood Jr.
(Turkey Scratch Arkansas March 27, 1915-Cleveland Ohio November 21.2006)
His name was Robert Lockwood Jr. after his father and he always insisted
that Robert Lockwood Jr. was the way he wanted to be addressed or placed on
the bill because that was his proper name.
William E. Donoghue AKA 'fessor Mojo
Seattle WA
gu...@donoghue.com<mailto:gu...@donoghue.com>
Blues-L web site: http://www.netspace.org/~blues-l/<http://www.netspace.org/~blues-l/>
Archives & web interface: http://lists.netspace.org/archives/blues-l.html<http://lists.netspace.org/archives/blues-l.html>
NetSpace LISTSERV(R) software donated by L-Soft, Inc. http://www.lsoft.com<http://www.lsoft.com/>
To unsubscribe from BLUES-L, send an email with the message UNSUBSCRIBE BLUES-L to: list...@lists.netspace.org<mailto:list...@lists.netspace.org>