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Some highlights of Robert Nighthawk's life from http://www.sundayblues.org/nighthawk/index.htm

Robert Nighthawk was one of the blues premier slide guitarists playing with a subtle elegance and a fluid, crystal clear style that was instantly recognizable. Nighthawk influenced a generation of artists including Elmore James, Muddy Waters, B.B. King and particularly Earl Hooker. In many ways Nighthawk was the archetype of the classic bluesman spending his entire adult life rambling all over the South with frequent trips to the North playing a never ending string of one nighters punctuated by sporadic recording dates. Nighthawk's recording dates brought him only limited success but he remained popular in the South his entire life.

Nighthawk was born Robert Lee McCollum in Helena, Arkansas, on Nov. 30 1909 to Ned and Mattie McCollum. Robert was one of three children which included a brother named Samuel and a sister named Ethel (there is said to be another sister named Margaret but both Nighthawk's daughter (Geni Ward) and his son (Sam Carr) say Margaret was a friend). As Nighthawk relates in a 1964 interview he came from a musical family: "Well all my people played music. Mother and dad and sister and brother and all. My brother played guitar. My brother helped me in all kind of ways. (My family) ...mostly played dances, parties, picnics and all that. When I left home I got right into it and I started blowing harmonica. I learnt that back in 24'. ...boy named Johnny Jones, he's from Louisiana, ...say he learn me so I did."

Nighthawk credits Stackhouse with teaching him guitar. "I started guitar in 1931....Guy lived down in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, he, name a Houston Stackhouse, he learned me to play." Stackhouse emphasized: "I learned him how to play guitar, back in the 30's. I'd say, You ain't gon' eat nothin' till you get these notes right...He done got bad with it then when he come back from Chicago." Stackhouse himself learned from Tommy Johnson and his brothers Mager and Clarence.

The first songs he taught Nighthawk were all songs Tommy Johnson recorded including "Big Road Blues", "Cool Water Blues" and Big Fat Mama." Stackhouse recalls first seeing Nighthawk blow harmonica in the early 30's: "Him and Willie Warren was playin' on the weekends at the Black Cat Drug Store in Hollandale then." Stackhouse and Nighthawk worked on a farm during the day while at night they played at dances and parties. Nighthawk increasingly roamed farther afield traveling all over the south meeting the likes of Charlie Patton, Will Shade, Muddy Waters, Eugene Powell (Sonny Boy Nelson), Tommy Johnson and likely Son House and Robert Johnson.

One of the musicians he knew particularly well was Muddy Waters. In an interview with Jim O'Neal he had this to say: "I knew him before I could pick nary a note on the guitar." They first met in Clarksdale as Waters elaborates: "We had one round circle-we all swam in that circle. Now he definitely knew Robert Johnson, because they all grew up around Friars Point way, from Friars Point over to Helena (Helena is just over the river in Arkansas), and I stayed from Clarksdale down to Rosedale, and Duncan, and Hillhouse, Rena Lara, and all them places. We had a circle we was going in." Nighthawk even played at Muddy's first wedding in 1932: "Robert Nighthawk played at my first wedding." The proceedings got so raucous that Muddy's floor collapsed.

On Nov. 5 1967 Robert McCollum died of congestive heart failure at the Helena hospital. "He loved Helena" said son Sam Carr, "that's the reason I buried him there." Nighthawk lies in Magnolia Cemetery. He was inducted into the Blues Foundation's Hall of Fame in 1983. On October 6th, 2000 Blues Aid provided a marker for the grave site of Robert Nighthawk with the ceremony taking place at the Magnolia Cemetery. The exact location of Nighthawk's grave remains unknown.

more... http://www.sundayblues.org/nighthawk/