Godspeed, Robert

Robert Lockwood, Jr. has died.
Most of his audiences were a generation, a race and a world removed from his and Robert Johnson's experience as impoverished African Americans in the Jim Crow South. If Lockwood seemed happiest playing Johnson's music, he often felt obligated to tell these earnest new fans that Johnson did not sell his soul to the devil at the crossroads, as myth had it.

A personal story. I was with a two-year old family member at a performance of his at the Chicago Blues Festival. As he played, I picked up the little one so she could see, and whispered "That's the greatest music in the world right there."

And she dug it.

So, the music world loses another one.