An East Arkansas guitarist would back up some of the greatest blues musicians of all time, though he was underrated and under-compensated.
Robert Lockwood Jr. was born in 1915 in Turkey Scratch west of Helena. He learned to play the guitar from the legendary Robert Johnson and began touring at age seventeen with Johnson, Johnny Shines and Sonny Boy Williamson.
In 1941 he teamed up with Williamson to perform on King Biscuit Time on Helena’s KFFA – the first regularly scheduled broadcast of country blues. Moving to Chicago in 1950, he backed such Chess Records stars as Little Walter and Muddy Waters, helping to develop the Chicago Shuffle style of blues.
Lockwood began performing under his own name after moving to Cleveland, Ohio, in 1961. Though he earned a reputation as a talented and innovative bluesman, he never achieved the same level of fame as some of the performers he backed. He continued to tour nationally and recorded an album a year until his death in 2006.
You can read the entire Encyclopedia entry at encyclopediaofarkansas.net/entries/robert-lockwood-jr-618.
