Robert Lockwood, Jr.
Robert Lockwood Jr. ( born March 27, 1915 in Helena, Arkansas, † November 21, 2006 in Cleveland, Ohio) was an American blues guitarist and singer.
Biography
Robert Lockwood Jr. began with eight years of playing in his father's church organ. After her parents divorced his mother lived ten years along with the blues legend Robert Johnson. From him Lockwood learned to play the guitar. From the age of 15 years Lockwood went on for several years with Sonny Boy Williamson. Later the two worked together again. Lockwood completely absorbed the style of Johnson, in which he made his first recordings in 1941. Some of them are on the anthologies Lonesome road blues to hear (USA: Yazoo 1038 ) and Windy city blues ( 101 Nighthawk USA). After Lockwood longer time lived in Memphis and Arkansas and worked with Sonny Boy Williamson on the radio show " King Biscuit Time" had, he went to Chicago, where he participated as a guitarist in many shots in JOB, Mercury Records, and especially at Chess Records. Here, Lockwood solved by Johnson's style and developed its own, complex, very focused on jazz guitar playing. As a guitarist he accompanied musicians such as Sonny Boy Williamson, Otis Spann and Little Walter, has collaborated with the Lockwood long.
Until 1971 Lockwood produced little own recordings. Worth mentioning is the very beautiful album Otis Spann is the Blues (D: CrossCut 1003) with Otis Spann on piano. 1961 Lockwood moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where he lived until his death. There he had from 1970 to his own band, with which he took part in many concerts and festivals and some albums grossed, for example, steady one rolling (USA: Delmark 630); Blues live in Japan ( USA: Advent 2806 ), where he was accompanied by the Aces and he presented himself as a musician from the Delta. Its full talent he developed on the two albums Contrasts (USA: Trix 3307 ) and Does Twelve (USA: Trix 3317 ). Later, he teamed up with Johnny Shines, another " student " of Johnson, with whom he recorded an album in 1980: Hangin 'on (USA: Rounder 2023). He was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame in 1989. In the nineties it has then become silent about him. Robert Lockwood Jr. won the 1998 for I Got To Find Me A Woman and 2000 for Delta Crossroads each a Grammy nomination. He was awarded the Living Blues Award for best male blues artists ausgezeichnetAm November 21, 2006 he died at University Hospitals Case Medical Center, Cleveland, Ohio, to respiratory failure in 2005.