[Slowhand] Robert Lockwood, Jr. Dies

[Sandra K. Anderson]

Thanks for the prompt, Scott.  Yes, I'm still here in Chicago.

Don't recall seeing this in the Digest.  Blues legend Robert Lockwood, Jr. 
passed away two weeks ago, at age 91.  Sam Mangano mentioned that he was 
still playing in a club in Cleveland up until recent weeks.  I only saw him 
once - at Chicago BluesFest in 2005 and he was amazing.   Here is the obit 
from the Chicago Sun-Times:

Robert Lockwood, Jr - Pioneering blues guitarist, singer
(http://www.suntimes.com/news/obituaries/147256,CST-NWS-xlockwood23.article)

November 23, 2006
Robert Lockwood Jr. -- a pioneering Mississippi Delta blues guitarist and 
singer who studied guitar as a child with legendary bluesman Robert Johnson 
and was a studio musician in Chicago for a host of blues records -- has 
died. He was 91.

Mr. Lockwood died Tuesday of respiratory failure at University Hospitals 
Case Medical Center in Cleveland. He had been a patient since suffering a 
stroke Nov. 3.

Mr. Lockwood was born in Turkey Scratch, Ark. At 11, he started guitar 
lessons with Johnson, who briefly moved in with Mr. Lockwood's mother.

''He never showed me nothing two times,'' Mr. Lockwood said in a 2005 
interview with the Cleveland Plain Dealer. ''After I got the foundation of 
the way he played, everything was easy.''

Mr. Lockwood worked on street corners and in bars and became a musical 
mentor to B.B. King, who listened to Mr. Lockwood in the 1940s on the 
''King Biscuit Time'' radio show broadcast from Helena, Ark.

Mr. Lockwood moved to Chicago in the 1950s and was a session player on 
records by Little Walter, Sunnyland Slim, Roosevelt Sykes and other blues 
musicians. He branched out from the delta-style blues to jump blues, jazz 
and funk. In 1960, he moved to Cleveland and played in blues clubs for 
decades.

As a solo performer, Mr. Lockwood earned Grammy nominations for two albums: 
1998's ''I Got to Find Me a Woman'' and 2000's ''Delta Crossroads.''

AP Copyright 2006 Associated Press. All rights reserved.