Surviving members of the Muddy Waters Band – just one of the highlights of the ’93 Long Beach Blues Festival. Photo: T.E. Mattox

A Delta blues overload most certainly, but the highpoint for me was the opportunity to sit for a few minutes with Robert Jr. Lockwood and talk briefly about his life, the music and his amazing longevity in the blues. It started with the most obvious topic, growing up around the mythical King of the Delta Blues Singers; Robert Johnson. Lockwood was often referred to as the stepson of the legend, but he was adamant about their relationship.

Was your mother married to Robert Johnson? “No, she was not!” Lockwood said. “My mother lived with Robert Johnson.” Was that your introduction to the guitar? “No, there were guitar players all over the country out there where I was born.” Lockwood was born in Turkey Scratch, Arkansas March 27, 1915 and he smiles when he adds. “Well, I guess Robert Johnson was my choice, but I knew a whole lot of other guitar players.”

What were your first memories of Robert Johnson? “He followed my mother home. And she couldn’t get rid of him.” (laughing) He was so young when he passed. “I don’t know how old he was when he died. He was a young man, yeah.” Why do you think he remains so popular? “Why?” Lockwood repeats. “The reason he’s so popular today is because he was before his time.”

Did you learn a lot from him? “He was my teacher.”

Your road is filled with blues elders, when did you first meet Sonny Boy Williamson (Rice Miller)? “I first met him when he came to my home in 1929.” Did you play on the street with him for awhile? “Yeah, around Arkansas and in Mississippi.” When did you start on ‘King Biscuit Time’ on KFFA? “That started in 1940. SonnyBoy had that first.”

In the 1950s you moved to Chicago, tell me a little about Roosevelt Sykes? “Well, I don’t have a favorite story, but he was a very nice man. We was like brothers, yeah. I worked with Roosevelt’s band about, close to two years. We did quite a bit of moving around, yes.”

You also worked with Eddie Boyd. “Yeah, I worked with Eddie about four years.”
Muddy? “You got everybody on there!? How’d you find all that stuff out?” (laughing)
I told you, I was a fan! (laughing) “Well, I played a little bit with Muddy’s band, not a lot. But I done a lot of recording with him.”

Sunnyland Slim? “Sunnyland and me had a trio together and a 4-piece together.”

The blues have taken you all over the world; you’ve toured in Europe and weren’t you one of the first blues players to tour in the Far East? “I was one of the first to go to Japan. My first trip to Japan was Tokyo and Osaka.” Did they give you a nice reception? “A lot better than America!” (laughing) “You trying to get me in trouble?” (laughing)

Johnny Winter once said he believed audiences overseas have more respect for American blues and American blues players because they don’t have as much access to it as the U.S. does. So, European and Asian blues fans show more appreciation for it when it comes their way.

Robert Jr. just smiles and says. “They treat me pretty good in the States, but they treat me better outside the States.”

Did you know Charlie Christian? “I never got a chance to meet him, I heard a lot about him and we were doing some of the same type of things when he was living, but Charlie was a horn player and a lot of people don’t know that. Yeah, he was an alto player.”

I didn’t know that. Do you play other instruments? “I play bass and piano a little bit.”

Tell me about the ‘Grapes of Wrath’ in Cleveland? “Ohhh! That was a little small place when I first started and tried to put a band together, I worked down there.”

Any rowdy clubs you can recall? “I don’t know…what do you mean by rowdy? 90% of the clubs have fights, how can I pick out one?” (laughing)

Can you describe Robert Jr. Lockwood’s blues? “Un-uh! My blues is so wide, my blues runs in every direction.”

Any new recordings what can we anticipate from Robert Jr. Lockwood? “I intend to do some more recording in the near future with about 9-pieces. And it’ll be jazz, too!” That’s great; jazz isn’t really new to you, is it? “Well, I’ve been playing it practically all of my life! There’s not a big difference between jazz and blues, because blues comes in all forms.”

You knew Willie Dixon? “He was a very good friend. I worked for Chess for 17 years.”

Robert Jr Lockwood on stage in France. Courtesy Lioneldecoster, Wkimedia Commons

At this festival they recreated KFFA’s ‘King Biscuit Time’ radio with Pinetop Perkins, Rufus Thomas and host, ‘Sunshine’ Sonny Paine; will you continue to perform with them? “I’ll help them out if they need it.” Do you like playing festivals? “It’s alright, it’s all work…it’s all work.”

And the man was nothing if not productive. Talking with producer, friend and fellow musician, Bob Corritore, he remembered a number of wonderful memories and time spent with Robert Jr. Lockwood. “I first met Robert in probably 1977 or ’78?” Bob says. “It was when the Paradise Club in Tulsa, Oklahoma had just opened up. I was going to college there, and Robert Lockwood whom I’d been a fan of for years at that point…from the Little Walter and Sonny Boy Williamson records…and he was playing in Tulsa for three or four days. So I went…everyday! I sat with him on breaks and he just kind of took me in as an adopted blues child. And that was the roll I would have with him for the rest of his life.”

Bob Corritore and Robert Jr. in studio. Photo courtesy of Dick Rice

You produced the album, ‘The Legend Live!’ “I got to take him into recording situations five times, which I feel good about!” Corritore says. “Robert was so disciplined, every time he came into town he’d ask me to bring him a practice amp so he could work on his music. He practiced every day, and he did pushups every day to stay in shape. He was filled with discipline and if you think about it, he had learned that style of Robert Johnson as a young man and that style was so physically involved, you had to have so much co-ordination between playing the bass notes and the melody lines spontaneously and he studied that every day. In the process he added his own embellishments and he actually made it more decorative than Robert Johnson had done…and I so admired him for that.”

As we wrapped up our conversation with Mr. Lockwood I asked if he’d ever thought about retirement. “It’s too late for me to retire!” He laughed. Did you ever work outside of music, other jobs? “No, no, no. I don’t know what I would have done. I started playing when I was eight years old. I started playing music at eight, yeah. So, I ain’t done too much work!”

We lost Robert Jr. Lockwood from respiratory failure November 21, 2006 at the age of 91. According to Bob Corritore the funeral held in the city of Cleveland was truly befitting “a statesman…a King’s sendoff.”And that is as it should be.

The post Robert Jr. Lockwood: ‘My Blues Is So Wide, It Runs in Every Direction’ appeared first on Traveling Archive.

In the blink of an eye its forty years later and Ball and Sultan have obviously heeded Gaynor’s advice, not only ‘surviving’ the journeymen’s lifestyle, but flourishing in those roles. Both musicians have achieved a number of milestones and been called almost everything; but the ones we can print here are musical historians, composers, authors, mentors and of course, performing artists. And both men continue to share their gifts by teaching. Kenny “regularly,” Tom “sporadically.” Their productivity, discography and the road they’ve traveled, has been nothing if not impressive. Sure, they’ve played every type of venue you can imagine, and some you probably can’t. From International open air music festivals in front of 50-thousand plus, to a regular haunt, an old West stage coach stop in the mountains above their Santa Barbara home base, called the Cold Spring Tavern.

When off the road, they are prolific. Their catalogue for Flying Fish/Rounder Records has blossomed. There are now eight Ball and Sultan duo albums and six solo releases, Kenny has two and Tom, four. They both do session work, Tom says. “I think it’s up to over 260 CDs for me now as a sideman.” Add to that, music scores for film and television and the instructional books, “I have five instructional and one novel. Kenny has at least that many, plus he has apps and about 5 DVDs. He’s more prolific in the teaching department than I am.”

There’s more than a hint of ‘pre-destined’ in Ball and Sultan’s unique musical journey. “Both of us grew up in the L.A. area and frequented the Ash Grove.” Tom says. “But we didn’t know each other.  When I moved north to Santa Barbara in 1978, Kenny was already here.” Almost immediately Ball says he began gigging with an electric blues band called ‘Blues Company’ backing national acts like Pee Wee Crayton, Phillip Walker and Smokey Wilson. “We had a few good gigs, but I was aching to play acoustic blues. I saw Kenny’s name in the paper and wanted to go catch his gig, but my band was playing that night. So I asked my girlfriend, now wife, Laurie if she could go check him out. She came back with a full report. ‘Great finger style player. Plays Blind Blake and Gary Davis. Good sense of humor. Drinks Heineken.’ So I figured this was someone I needed to meet. Heineken and Blind Blake were two of my biggest hobbies.”

That shared love of Blind Blake, beer and the Rev. Gary Davis has now culminated in 40 years of friendship and music. So how did you and Kenny first meet? “We finally met at a Santa Barbara Blues Society show.” Tom says. “Big Mama Thornton! I introduced myself, we got to talking and Kenny invited me over to his place to pick a bit. It sounded pretty good. The next day Kenny was guesting on local radio KCSB, drumming up business for his teaching gig at UCSB. He asked me to come accompany him. After we’d played a song, the phone rang — it was the Sojourner Cafe, offering us $15 and a pizza to play there on Friday night. We accepted… but only after holding out for free beer. The rest, as they say, is history.”

Other than beer and pizza, the Ball-Sultan bond seems strengthened by the admiration and respect they both share for the early players. “I used to hang out at the Ash Grove.” Kenny grins. “My older brother used to take me there, on his dates. I was 11 years old and he’d take his kid brother. I remember going to see Furry Lewis, Mance Lipscomb, Lightnin’.” You were eleven? “Everybody else was listening to the Monkees and I was listening to Howlin’ Wolf!”

One bluesman really struck a chord with Kenny. “Lightnin’ was great! I remember seeing him at the Ash Grove, just sitting up there with his big, black electric guitar. Sitting up there smoking…in a smoke-filled room…with sunglasses on! He was great! You hear him play and you know it’s him.”

When Tom and Kenny perform, you immediately recognize there is more to their artistry than blues. Much more! Their unique combination of style and musical arrangement give a distinctive signature to the more traditional sound; “We don’t dwell on the depressing side of life. We keep it up tempo and we deal with light subjects.” Kenny says. “Blues can be fun and humorous, they don’t have to always be sad and about your troubles in life. I’m not sure we’re blues musicians exactly. Obviously we love blues and play blues, but we play a little folk, ragtime, country and bluegrass as well. When I think about blues players, I think about Lightnin’ Hopkins, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. They would come out and play Blues! Tom and I play a lot of different styles. In reality, we’re musicians who like the blues and incorporate that in our music, but we do a lot of different things. We’re not down and out…. we live in Santa Barbara.”

Nodding in agreement, Tom adds. “We never worked in any coal mines. People that have the true claim to the blues are Son House, John Hurt, J.D. Short, Blind Blake, Bukka White. Those people lived the blues. They had troubles, they had pain and suffering. They worked on levee camps and were sharecroppers and had a real reason to sing the blues. Kenny and I enjoy that tradition in so far as it’s a soulful tradition, an important American tradition. But we learned the blues mostly from old 78 records.”

“We don’t profess to be something we’re not,” says Kenny. “We’re ourselves on stage; we don’t put on any act up there.” He smiles, “That’s why our business card says ‘Good Time Blues’.”

How’s the next 40 shaping up for you? “We have a few festivals coming up: Millpond in the Sierras. Shobefest in Ojai. Next year there are a few on the books as well. At this point we just hope to keep breathing. And we need to say thanks to everyone — these 40 years could never have happened if nobody was showing up and listening.”

Tom Ball and Kenny Sultan have had an amazing ride together and as previously mentioned are serious contenders for ‘weirdest venue’ honors. “We were playing in the recreation room of a mental institution in the Netherlands.” Kenny remembers. “It was for the criminally insane and the rec room was the only place where they didn’t monitor the patients. They just sort of let them be themselves. So we had twenty people, kind of, sitting on our laps and pulling at our hair…and poking us.”

‘Good Time Blues’ journeymen working the ‘fringe’ elements. “There was one guy,” Tom says, “who could speak only two words of English. The only thing he could say was, ‘El Monte! El Monte!’ He would come up to us, poking our faces and guitars and chests and yelling, ‘El Monte! El Monte!’ A pretty interesting guy.”

“We were playing,” Kenny continues. “And everybody really wasn’t getting it. And this one lady was laughing at the right spots, like on ‘Bloodshot Eyes’ and ‘Chicken Ala Blues.’ I’m going, ok, she must be staff, you know, cool. Then Tom left the stage and I’m doing my solo, obviously an instrumental… and she’s STILL laughing! That’s how it was… AND we had to STAY there.” (laughing) “That was our accommodations for the night… on the hospital grounds. They put us up in; I don’t know what you’d call it, a bunkhouse? We did our laundry there. That was interesting; a lot of folks watching the dryers go ’round. It was a good gig, a memorable gig.”

Well, there probably won’t be any laundry service at the Anniversary show but you can count on it being ‘memorable.’ The Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara will play host to Tom Ball and Kenny Sultan’s 40^th Anniversary celebration on Saturday, October 26^th. Showtime is 8PM.

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