”21 Days in Jail” for Bob Howe & John “Chinner” Mitchell Robert Lockwood Junior was born on a farm between Aubrey & Marvell, Arkansas, around 25 miles west & north of Helena, on March 27, 1915. As a young man living in Helena with his mother around 1928 or ’29, Robert Lockwood had the good fortune to meet his mentor, Robert Johnson, who had big eyes for young Robert’s mama & hung around the house there long enough for Robert Junior to pick up on his music. Robert says: ”At the time, my ambition was to play a piano or an organ. I had heard a lot of guitar players, but I wasn’t interested in ’em. But then Robert came along, & he was backin’ himself up without anybody helping him & sounding good. He would go somewhere to play for people & tear up the house. So I go188188t right on top of that. By him having a crush on my mother I got a chance to be around him a little bit. I think I’m about the only one he ever taught. 2 Around 1934 or ’35 Rice Miller began to appear at Robert Lockwood’s door seeking his mother’s permission could Robert Junior accompany him (Rice Miller, later known as Sonny Boy Williamson, ”secret hero of these poems,” the greatest harmonica player of all time). So Robert says: ”I started going to places in Arkansas with him, but he worried my mother for about two years, before she let me go to Mississippi with him. And sure enough, we had some pretty strange experiences there. One time we left the Delta & went up into the hill country, & in Sardis they put us in jail for vagrancy for 21 days. That was on a 189Friday. On Saturday we went up to the second floor & raised the jailhouse windows & started playing. In a matter of minutes the jailhouse was surrounded with people. There was a little fence down there, about as big as the one by the side of my yard, & the people started throwing nickels & dimes & quarters & dollars over that fence. The trusty went out there & picked the money up & we knew he didn’t bring it all to us. We knew he got fat, but when he turned it in to us, we had made four hundred dollars. That day. The next night the high sheriff & the deputy sheriff came & asked us did we want to go out & make some money. Sid & Ed was their names. And for the next 21 days, they took us out to serenade for the whites, every night but Sunday. They’d take up 190190the money for us, pass the hat, make the people not put nothin’ less than a dollar in it. And then they’d take us back & put us in jail. Now, mind you, they was bustin’ places for corn whiskey left & right, & they gave us a whole gallon of that. We had girls comin’ to the jailhouse & spendin’ the night. We was eatin’ from a hotel down the street. So it really wasn’t like bein’ in no jailhouse. But it was terrible because it was against our will. See, this particular part of Mississippi was really starved for music. And the police officers, they liked the way we sounded & just took advantage of bein’ police officers. They knew the only way they was going to be able to enjoy us was to lock us up. Sonny Boy was doing quite a few country & western things— ’You A191191re My Sunshine’ & stuff like that—but we would do the blues for them, too. Them white people down there always did like the blues. They just didn’t like the people who created the blues. 3 ”Well, by the time our 21 days was up, we had close to a thousand dollars apiece. So old man Ed asked me & Sonny Boy at the same time, ‘Look, if I turn y’all loose, what y’all gonna do?’ And I mean I’ll tell you the truth, even if it hurt me. I grew up like that. I said, ’Mr. Ed, I’m getting’ the hell outta here.’ Sonny Boy said, ‘Whoahhh, I’m gonna st-stst-stay around awhile.’ They laughed & let us out. Knew damn well he was lying. And as soon as we got out, we hit the highway.” —Detroit March 22, 1985