When I met Robert Lockwood, Jr. in June of 2000 he invited me to his home for an interview for the Rock & Roll Library. Lockwood, now eighty years old, is a Grammy nominated blues guitarist, one of the most famous Chicago sidemen of the fifties, and is the step-son of blues legend Robert Johnson.

We want people to understand why you continue to play and why you continue to tour and how important the music is in your life. Can you kind of speak to that?

RL: Well, in the beginning I started playing at eight. It's about all I ever learned really. I started playing professionally at fifteen and I played by myself about ten years then I got a band. I been playing all my life, and then the next thing, while I was real young, Robert Johnson come up to my mothers house.

How old were you when you met Robert Johnson?

RL: I was thirteen.

Did he give you your first guitar?

RL: No, no, no. No, me and him together made a guitar.

How did that sound?

RL: It didn't stay together long. My auntie bought my first guitar she's still living. She's only four years older than I am. Well, anyway, Robert was a recording artist and he was way ahead of his own time so, by him teaching me put me ahead of my own time.

What did people think about him at that time? When he was so far ahead of his own time? What do you remember about that time?

RL: When you're ahead of your own time people don't know that you're ahead of your time. See that's what really happened, they found out he's ahead of his time after he had done so much. There wasn't anyone else doing it and that's when they said he was rare. You understand? By him teaching me, put me way ahead of my own time. I started playing the piano then I switched from the piano to the guitar. So I had a little experience with what the music was about and to learn from him was easy because I was already playing. That's what my mother and him they didn't understand that. But I learned fast, real fast

So he saw that you were good, that you picked it up very quickly.

RL: Yeah, then I was real good, real fast.

What type of ways did he influence your guitar style?

RL: Well, it wasn't nothing special to see. Everybody, all the guitar players, there was always two of them. Robert was playing his own music, his own melody and backing himself up. So that was easy to see. So I just said, well that's what I want to do. I got his picture there on the wall. You ever seen it?

I have only seen two pictures of him.

RL: Two different pictures. One of him sitting crossed legged holding his guitar and this picture, he's standing up with a guitar in his hand.

Did you have a good relationship? Were you friendly when you played?

RL: Well, yes, if we hadn't been, he'd never taught me. He didn't want to teach nobody.

Johnny Shine?

RL: He didn't teach nobody else. No damn body else. Nobody.

So that was a really unique experience for you.

RL: Yes, and Johnny Shine to me was, well, we grew up pretty close together. I never went nowhere with him but to Mississippi I went one place to play with Johnny in Arkansas.

Did you play with Robert Johnson a lot?

RL: No

Very rarely?

RL: Very rarely

A few occasions though? Once, in Mississippi you said?

RL: We were together twice in Mississippi and once in Arkansas. That's it.

How old were you when you played those gigs?

RL: How old was I? Fifteen, sixteen.

What was the climate of the places you were playing?

RL: There was no places.

You were playing at parties or in juke joints. And what about when you were finally able to get into recording studios?

RL: When I made my first record from RCA

Was it Blackbird?

RL: In 1940.

Was that in Chicago?

RL: Yes and during that time it was in wartime so the material they made records out of was very short. There was a hell of a shortage of that. So I started recording at the wrong time, didn't get the right paper in the wrong time. So I couldn't I probably could've gotten another recording session but I didn't really try. Well, our problem was they found me being so good, so young, that I listened to all the other guys who were making records and there just was no comparison. When I came up there to record the guy who was working for RCA Victor tried to brainwash me and said I don't know whether your stuff's gonna sell or not. At that time it wasn't paying nothing but fifty dollars and they were using four sides then for a recording session. Two records, and they would pay you fifty dollars for that, twelve fifty a side. I wouldn't record for that.

That's when you went down to King Biscuit?

RL: Yes. So I wouldn't record for the twelve dollars fifty cents a side. Dr. Clayton and I were together and Dr. Clayton being a little older than I was had a little better knowledge about what was happening. He was a better-educated young fella anyway. So I got a thousand dollars for doing my playing and recording with him.

That's a little better.

RL: That's a lot better. So after we done the recording session, I left Chicago and went back to St. Louis. And I had to get a social security card before I could get paid. So I got the social security card, came back to Chicago and picked up my money. And left there again and I went back in 1940. I went back in 1941 and I stayed in Chicago until 1960. I worked for Chess, Checker, Otto, RCA Victor. I worked out of all those studios. I worked as a studio musician for about twelve years.

You got to play with a lot of different people then?

RL: That's the way I learned to play everything. Jazz and everything else.

Did you have a favorite person who came in to record?

RL: Well it wasn't that way, we was working for the company.

So you had to play with everybody?

RL: Whenever somebody was getting ready to record, we were up on the kind of things they had done.

Were there people that you preferred to play with? Your friends?

RL: Normally we didn't hardly get a chance to know nobody. After you record for them then you know them. When you're working out of a studio you don't have choices. So, whoever come in there, whatever they done that fits their category, that's what you do.

And so much later in the 80's you started your own label?

RL: Oh, I only started my own label here lately. Since I been here. I had the label oh about ten or eleven years. I started my own label because I got sick of people tryin to twist me into other people's image. That's what they do. And if you don't like it you can't record. So I fixed that and got my own damn label so I could do what I want to do when I get ready. Ever since I have the label people been steady wanting to hire me. They don't want us to have our own label. You know they don't. They don't want the musicians today to have their own labels either. B.B. King got his own already, Ray Charles got his, Stevie Wonder got his. They don't get time to record on them.

RL: I got a manager and that's my son, and he usually charges for interviews, and we don't do them for nothing so you're lucky.

I am honored you are talking with us today.

RL: I was responsible for B.B.'s career, Elsa Tucker and several other guys who I worked at. I worked with Walter, I worked with Otis Span, I worked with Muddy Waters. I worked with the Moonglows. If they didn't understand what was happening I had to teach them. So that's the way they got taught. I never went out just to be no teacher. I played with B.B. about a year. His timing was so damn bad he couldn't understand nothing I was trying to tell him. So his sponsor wanted me to play a bass with him. He didn't know how to play nothing. He couldn't play lead either. But his sponsor didn't know no more than he did you know, so I told his sponsor I, I couldn't stop playing the guitar to play the bass and I told him what to do for him. B.B. didn't know where that come from either. I told him to put him with a band and he'd have to find out where he was going cause you can't work with no band unless you know something. So, B.B. been listening to the bass ever since. He's listening to the bass right now. Now he can read. He can read and play now. Yeah.

You have had a fantastic career there have been so many highlights; how was the Grammy nomination in 1999?

RL: Well, there's so much about this business that you don't know about. I would have been in the Grammy's damn near all my life but I never was handled by no big company. People don't know. I been with the small company's it don't do you no good. You know, and, I guess it was because I was eligible to lead everybody else's band, so I didn't really worry about it. I was getting, there was decent pay. Didn't have to be no leader. I didn't have to be no really leader; I was leading other people's bands. When I finally left Chicago I had to get my own band. When I was in Chicago I didn't have to.

The blues embody so much about America and about the times and the way life was for so many people

RL: Well, rhythm and entertainment seemingly, we was born with that. So the reason why blues is so strong is Blues is history. And that'll never go. Plus, Blues was born in America it's really the only American music. Blues and Jazz stuff that we recorded.

Who do you think is going to take blues into the next century? Are there any players out there that you like?

RL: (Laughing) Blues ain't never gonna go no place because it's too valuable as a whole.

But it continues to evolve, do you think?

RL: Yeah, all music does that. But the blues can't, ain't never gonna be able to go because it's the foundation. I mean it'll do things that it has done, so far. It went from uh, rhythm to changes, chord changes and big band, jazz, blues, there's been steady changes, I seen it change about five or six times. And it kind of repeats itself. The more people learn about music then the more changes they can make in it. I guess that's the way it is.

Are there any players or any young players that you see out there doing this?

RL: No. Young players only copping what we done. Well, in so many words it's getting simpler because the white society don't know what's happening with a lot of things, it takes ya'll a long time. You know what I used to have to do? When my clientele got white, I had to stop looking at you all dance. I'm serious, I'm very serious.

At this point we were laughing out loud but Robert kept saying that he was serious and his eyes told me he was. I had to close my eyes and just not look because I was laughing so hard tears were running down my face.

I'm sorry

RL: Ya'll just didn't have no damn rhythm.

Robert's eyes had softened as he saw how embarrassed I was by my counterparts not knowing how to dance. Laughing as well,
RL: Ain't nothing to be sorry about. Ya'll just don't have it till you find out what it is

We appreciate the music and we try to move to it.

RL: My clientele has been white for about forty or fifty years and I'm noticing that ya'll been learning how to dance.

Good, cause we try.

RL: People are coming together little by little.

Do you see that?

RL: Music is the article that's been damaged. I had a Hillbilly band coming on behind me when I was in Little Rock, Arkansas. I worked on KLXR for I don't know, for a year. And it's incredible the way musicians get along and the way ordinary square people get along. You just don't know how pitiful it really is until you see it. That other band had six pieces, my band had seven and we would join each other for each other's shows. And they were extraordinary good and we were playing jazz and stuff and what caused us to get together was I was coming on right in front of them. They was coming on right behind me. When I found out they was doing this, the radio had needed a tube in my station wagon. I never got a chance to hear them.

So I guess I been on KLXR about four months later and my piano player put a tube in the radio. The broadcast came on after. Let's listen to these goddamn Hillbillies. So I said ok and we turned it on, like yesterday we had "One O'clock Jump" and stuff like that on the program. They were taking everything we do and playing it tomorrow. That's what people do. When we turned that radio on and somebody was doing "One O'clock Jump" it was Count Basie or somebody, a damn string band! Laughing out loud, we all got out of the station wagon and went back inside and the band leader fell on the floor. It was funny as hell. They were good musicians, very good.

But they just couldn't play the "One O'clock Jump?"

RL: No, no. The person who was working in the station with them was involved in all different stuff. After we got together, we was buying a half gallon of liquor everyday. There was thirteen people so it was just enough to give everybody a little buzz. I guess we had been doing this about a month I guess. So the little guy in the control room, he seen this. So he told me to come up in his office. So I got ready to go up there, the other guy says I know this concerns the bands, so he said I'm going too. I got up there and the guy starts saying he doesn't think it's very nice that we are drinking together and all that. And the white boy hit the ceiling, we both did. When we got through with his ass, he was drinking with us.
Big laugh from Robert.

So you had experiences where white musicians stood up for you.

RL: Nine times out of ten, musicians have not been prejudice. The square world is because they don't know any better. Still don't know, and you're a hell of a victim because you don't know.

Congratulations to Robert Lockwood, Jr. who recently won a W.C. Handy Blues Award for Best Acoustic Album 2000. Robert was also nominated for Traditional Male Artist of the Year. His prior W.C. Handy Blues Awards include: 1999 - Traditional Male Artist of the Year and 1999 - Traditional Album of the Year.

Selected Discography:
Delta Crossroads 2000, Telarc
Robert Lockwood Jr. 2000, Black & Blue
Complete Trix Recordings 1999, Trix
I Got to Find Me a Woman 1998, Verve
What's The Score 1991, Evidence
Plays Robert and Robert 1982, Evidence
Mr. Blues Is Back to Stay 1980, Rounder
Hangin' On 1979, Rounder
Does 12 1977, Trix
Blues Live in Japan 1975, Advent
Contrasts 1974, Trix
Steady Rollin' Man 1970, Delmark

Robert Lockwood, Jr. plays every Wednesday at FATFISH BLUE at the corners of Prospect and Ontario, Cleveland, OH and you can also see him every Friday at Club XO located at 8307 Madison Cleveland, Ohio 44102.

Robert Lockwood Official Website


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