Robert Jr. Lockwood is best known as the stepson of legendary bluesman Robert Johnson, although at 60 he is in fact about the same age that Johnson, who died in 1938, would be today. Johnson evidently was attracted to older women, and his relationship with Lockwood's mother was one of the most durable of his brief and stormy life.

Lockwood in any case learned a great deal from Johnson as a teenager and young man. His bottleneck style of guitar playing, showcased in "Little Boy Blue," the signature tune from his only prewar session, reflects both his indebtedness to Johnson and his unique sensitivity to the Delta blues sound. When he emerged on record again, in Chicago in the Fifties, it was primarily as a sideman that he made his mark.

What distinguishes his accompanying style is an extraordinary responsiveness to the recording artist, a T-Bone Walker-styled, rhythm-oriented guitar—in which notes emerge in sparkling clusters, singlestring work is predominant and chords reinforce the bottom—and an advanced sense of harmonics which enables him to slip in be-bop changes not ordinarily encountered in the blues. From listening to his work in a secondary role alone, you can come to the conclusion that Robert Jr. Lockwood, along with another Robert Johnson disciple, Johnny Shines, is the possessor of one of the most adventurous imaginations in the blues.

In the last couple of years, three solo albums have come out which reflect the various sides of Robert Jr. Lockwood. The first, a somewhat desultory outing on Delmark, Steady Rollin' Man, features Lockwood in combination with the Aces, Little Walter's old backing trio. What seems to have happened is that Lockwood was urged to cut standards with which he was identified, an understandable enough recording ploy. Lockwood unfortunately was uncomfortable in the role, seeing himself still as a progressive and forward-looking musician. His own reaction to the album ("I didn't care nothing about it. I only got two tunes on there that I respect a little bit, and they were new") bears out his image of himself.

This image is further borne out by a brilliant album released about a year ago on the Trix label (Contrasts), which features Lockwood with his own Cleveland-based trio of drums, bass and sax in a varied program of traditional blues, soulful ballads, uptempo jumps and even a boppish instrumental, "Majors, Minors, and Ninths." On this record his sense of adventurousness will sometimes take him into unfamiliar territory, from which he emerges only with some difficulty. It's an exciting, vibrant record, though, and one which comes closer to Lockwood's musical conception than either of the other two.

His latest album, Blues Live in Japan, comes from a country in which Lockwood is, oddly enough, something of a cult figure. It, too, features the Aces and makes the same mistake as the Delmark in emphasizing standards like "Sweet Home Chicago," "Going Down Slow" and "Stormy Monday," and placing Lockwood in a situation in which his vocal talents, never strong to begin with, are forced to take precedence over his instrumental strengths. There is, however, a sense of animation at least: the Aces—consisting of Louis and David Myers and the incomparable Fred Below on drums—provide impeccable support, and Lockwood, spurred on perhaps by an enormously enthusiastic Japanese audience, gives evidence of real involvement.

These albums, together with a Barnaby cutout, Otis Spann Is the Blues, are all that is readily available of the recorded legacy of Robert Jr. Lockwood. He is not a bluesman on the order of Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Son House or his mentor Robert Johnson, for his vocals are simply too thin to carry the emotional weight of their music. He is, however, a bluesman whose strong exploratory sense, in a tradition not often noted for its sense of adventurousness, deserves recognition, praise and more widespread support. (RS 216)

PETER GURALNICK