Born Gerald Loughran on 19 July 1942 in Yeotmal, Central Province, India, to an Irish father and Indian mother, he died on 17 November 1987. The family settled in England in 1953. By 1955, at the age of thirteen, he was already performing on guitar with the skiffle outfit the Hornets. Exposure to Scotty Moore’s work behind Elvis Presley ignited a deeper fascination with the instrument, yet it was the playing of Big Bill Broonzy and Brownie McGhee that he later named as his strongest influences. Throughout the early 1960s he worked steadily across European clubs, and by the second half of the decade his reputation had grown throughout Britain and the continent. In 1974 he joined Joe Cocker’s American tour; when the headliner fell ill, promoters invited Lockran to take the top slot, but he refused, explaining that he ‘didn’t want to be Joe Cocker’ because he already possessed a devoted audience of his own. During this period he also opened for Stevie Wonder, the Eagles and Rod Stewart, and U.S. journalists began comparing him to Taj Mahal.
Lockran eventually distanced himself from the British folk circuit, recognizing that steady work in the United States offered greater financial security. The shift was hastened by the folk scene’s widespread dismissal of blues material in the early 1970s, which favored its own traditional repertoire instead. While returning from a German tour in October 1981 he suffered a heart attack; shortly afterward a stroke impaired the left side of his body. A second heart attack in 1982 ended his ability to perform, leaving his contributions to country-blues and rag-time preserved solely on record. His albums included appearances by Cliff Aungier, Henry McCullough, Pete Wingfield and Neil Hubbard. In 1983 a volume of his poetry, Smiles And Tears, appeared in print. He suffered a further heart attack and died in November 1987. The esteem in which he was held was evident at a benefit concert staged for his family on 24 January 1988 at the Half Moon in Putney, London, where Cliff Aungier, Gordon Giltrap, Wizz Jones, Bert Jansch, Dave Kelly, Alexis Korner and Henry McCullough all performed.
