R. Thomas Lockie

R. Thomas Lockie’s grandfather started a small music store in downtown Los Angeles in the 1920s. The store was later owned and operated by Tom’s father who played “keep the store in business” during the Great Depression. Tom’s father was a movie studio musician who specialized in playing the piano. The relationships he cultivated with other studio musicians resulted in the business he needed to keep the Lockie Store open in those difficult economic times. Just before the war, he went into partnership with a cane grower in France and helped establish the Rico Reed Company, which for a short time sold reeds exclusively from the Lockie Store. Tom helped expand that distribution in later years and at one point was the president of the Rico Reed Corporation.