Listening to Robert Jr. Lockwood's 1970 release Steady Rollin' Man, just reissued by Delmark Records you can hear the Jazz influence on his guitar loud and clear. It's not that he is playing Jazz songs, but playing Blues music and Blues chords and progressions on a guitar that sounds like it should be playing Jazz.
Have you heard an electric Jazz guitar? They are usually the large hollow body type guitars that look a lot twelve string guitars that the Birds would have played on songs like "Mr. Tambourine Man". But something about their set-up makes them sound far more melodic than anything the Birds would have played.
Each note rings out clean and distinct and carries a slight bell like echo and has a cleanness that one doesn't normally associate with an electric guitar. Now imagine that sound playing a blues song and you've got a fairly good idea of how Robert Jr. Lockwood sounds.
Lockwood is a guitar player's guitar player. In other words he could always be counted on to deliver a good solid performance. How good was he? Well by the mid fifties he was "The" studio guitar player in Chicago playing for everybody from Muddy Waters to Little Walter. In the early 1960's he followed Sonny Boy Williamson to Cleveland (Robert Jr.must be one of the few guys who played with both the original Sonny Boy Williamson on the "King Biscuit Time" radio hour and his successor to the name) where they played a steady gig for three years.
When Sonny Boy went off to Europe in 1963 Lockwood backed away from music to concentrate on his family for a while. But he got back into performing in the late 1960's early 70's when the first upswing in "roots" music came around. Finally after all those years performing as everyone's sideman, when Lockwood released Steady Rollin' Man it was his first album as a bandleader.
Showing the wisdom he had accumulated from years in the business he hired the Aces – Louis Myers, Dave Myers, and Fred Below, to fill out the band. Each of these men were fine musicians in their own right who had released albums individually or as a unit in the past. The four men had even worked together on albums before this one so this marked a reunion of like minds; men who understood what the others wanted without being asked and could play together seamlessly.
Article comments