Performing and recording alongside more famous contemporaries like Lightnin’ Hopkins, L.C. Williams, and Melvin “Little Son” Jackson, blues shouter Jesse Lockett was a big figure on the 1940s Houston blues scene and a pioneering vocalist in the postwar Texas record industry—notable for making the first blues record to appear on a Texas-based label—yet very little is known of him and his scant recording career today.
Jesse Eugene Lockett was born on September 23, 1912, in Trinity County, Texas. He grew up in Houston, where he attended Wheatley High School. In adulthood, he was described as a heavyset, dark complected man, about five feet, ten inches tall and weighing as much as three-hundred pounds, and was called at point a “buxom and vociferous singer of the blues (all gut bucket).” While living in Houston in the summer of 1935, Lockett—despite a plea of not guilty—was convicted of burglary and theft and sentenced to seven years on the Clemens State Farm in Brazoria County beginning on September 11, 1935. There, on April 16, 1939, noted folklorist John A. Lomax recorded him singing “Worry Blues” and accompanying himself on the guitar in one of his prison recording trips for the Library of Congress. Only a few months later, he was released early, walking free on September 14, 1939. Soon after his release, he formed a band called the Blue Five, which was well received in Houston in the early-to-mid-1940s, making appearances at both public venues and private functions. Known for composing most of his own material, he earned regular mention in the local black newspaper, the Informer and Texas Freeman, in which he was hailed as “Houston’s gift to the music world.” Some of his known appearances included regular revues at the Lincoln Theatre at 711 Prairie Street, nightclub shows, including a bi-weekly “Harlem Review” at Lee Curry’s New Harlem Grill and opening night at Sutton Batteau’s Blue Room, and at least one concert at the City Auditorium. He was often joined in these shows by tap dancer Jimmy De Barber and blackface comedian “Cream Puff” Smith, and he shared the stage at times with such noted bands as LeRoy Hardison’s Carolina Cotton Pickers and I.H. Smalley’s Rockateers. In the early 1940s, Lockett had a string of engagements on the East Coast, and around the same time was purported to have been a “Decca recording artist,” with some of his songs listed as “Defense Blues” and “The New Sugar Ration Blues”, though no evidence of these songs or of Lockett ever recording for Decca appears to exist. A few years later, around late 1945, he made his documented commercial recording debut for Bill Quinn’s Houston-based Gulf label with “Boogie Woogie Mama” and “Blacker the Berry”, the first and only known blues record to appear on the first record label based in Texas. An October 1945 newspaper article reported that Lockett had recorded ten sides for an unnamed “local record company” (presumably Gulf), but only the aforementioned two are known to have been released. Soon after, he ventured out west to join Earl Sims’ Sextette on a pair of jump blues sides recorded for the Los Angeles-based Globe label. Following this stint in California, Lockett returned to Houston, at which point he recorded once again for Bill Quinn—whose Gulf label had become Gold Star—cutting four sides as a vocalist with Will Rowland’s Orchestra (who had apparently traveled with him from California) in late 1948, including “Run Mr. Rabbit Run” and “Reefer Blues”. Afterwards, he seems to have gone back to California, where—apparently finding it hard to stay out of trouble—he was incarcerated again by 1950, this time in the Los Angeles County Jail, ostensibly putting an end to his promising career in music. After serving his sentence again, Lockett remained in California, where he died in San Luis Obispo on March 14, 1966.
Globe 122 was recorded sometime in 1946 in Los Angeles, California, and released the same year. Earl Sims’s Sextette consists of Sims on alto saxophone, Doc Jones on tenor sax, Jimmy Moorman on trumpet, Laurence Robinson on piano, C. LeChuga on string bass, and Felix Gross on drums.
On the record’s first side, Jesse Lockett sings a slow blues of his own composition titled “Mellow Hour Blues”. Lockett seems to have been both a fine singer and songwriter, drawing inspiration from the folk blues tradition.
Mellow Hour Blues, recorded c. 1946 by Jesse Lockett with Earl Sims Sextette.
On the “B” side, Lockett sings a “jump boogie” titled “Hole in the Wall”, not to be confused with the different song of the same name recorded by fellow Texas blues singer L.C. Williams around two years later.
Hole in the Wall, recorded c. 1946 by Jesse Lockett with Earl Sims Sextette
