Ronnie Hawkins, the great southern rockabilly singer who called on Canada and helped mentor the country’s first Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, has died.
His wife Wanda confirmed to The Canadian Press that Hawkins died Sunday morning after a long illness at the age of 87. “He went quietly and looked as handsome as ever,” he said in a telephone interview with The Canadian Press.
The musician known as The Hawk did not make his reputation in the studio. His highest single in the United States reached number 26 and, not a natural composer, most of his recorded work consisted of versions. But his stage shows were strident subjects, characterized by his booming voice, his humorous stage tapestry, and acrobatic movements like his “camel walk.”
Hawkins, who was born and raised in Arkansas, had a steady working wind available at the Conway Twitty Canadian Bar Circuit, among others. He began touring Ontario in 1958, and when he appeared in a CBC Telescope documentary nine years later, he was already based in Canada.
“You know, I don’t know anything about Canadian politics, the price of wheat or Niagara Falls,” he said in the document. “But I’m sure I know one thing: I’m sure I’ll dig it up here.”
Hawkins, left, was appointed Honorary Officer of the Order of Canada by General David Johnston in 2014. (Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press)
Hawkins’ band over the years included musicians and performers who had their own hits, including Roy Buchanan, Beverly D’Angelo, David Foster, Lawrence Gowan and Pat Travers.
But there were five specifics that would consolidate Hawkins’ reputation in the music world as a great statesman. Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, Richard Manuel, and Robbie Robertson eventually left Hawkins en masse for the United States. They backed Bob Dylan and then left their own brand as a band, with critically acclaimed albums and hits such as The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Up on Cripple Creek and The Weight.
“We have to thank Ronnie Hawkins for being so important to us for coming together and for teaching us the ‘road code,’ so to speak,” guitarist Robertson said when the band was incorporated. at the 1994 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
For reasons that have been debated — his love for Canada, no doubt playing a role — Hawkins could not fully understand the brass ring or allow the heavyweights of the American music industry to shape his career. The biggest character in life seemed happy to carve out a reputation for himself north of the border.
“I brought the first blues here. No one had ever heard of Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters, BB [King] or anyone in Canada, ”music journalist Larry LeBlanc once boasted, perhaps doubtfully.
Hawkins won a Juno Award for Male Country Vocalist of the Year in 1982 and received awards for his career as both Junos in 1996 and the Society of Composers, Authors and Music Publishers of Canada (SOCAN) in 2007. Always retaining U.S. citizenship, in 2014 he accepted an honorary appointment as an officer of the Order of Canada.
As described in Helm’s autobiography This Wheel’s On Fire, Hawkins often had to enchant the parents of a young musician to fill his band. His recruiting argument for potential band members had a lower G score and usually included the promise that they would have more sex “than Sinatra”, albeit in less euphemistic terms.
Hawkins may not have sold millions, but he did well enough to reside on a multimillion-dollar property in Stoney Lake, in the Kawarthas region of Ontario. As recently as 2016, he hosted longtime friends Gordon Lightfoot and Kris Kristofferson for a session in his home studio.
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Hers was a life full of colorful experiences. He recorded with everyone, from the great Duane Allman to the author of The Happy Hooker, Xaviera Hollander, portrayed Bob Dylan in the much-criticized Dylan film Renaldo and Clara, while acting in another failure. notable at the box office, Heaven’s Gate, and was one of the film’s Canadian collaborators. Tears Are Not Enough Hunger Benefit Song In 1985.
John Lennon and Yoko Ono invited to his farm during an extended stay in Toronto in 1969 was one of Hawkins’ favorite stories. I would say more than one CBC host over the years of a smoking session that included both Lennon and Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau.
True or great story? He often didn’t know it with Hawkins, but he definitely performed at the inaugural parties in Washington, DC, in 1993 for the first American president of Arkansas.
“If the world had more people like Ronnie Hawkins, we’d make each other less stupid, we’d make fewer people, we’d laugh a lot more,” Bill Clinton said in the 2004 documentary Hawkins: Still Alive. and Kickin ‘. “I’ve never met anyone like him.”
Hawkins, left, appears alongside Kris Kristofferson in 2002, when Hawkins received a star on the Canada Walk of Fame in Toronto. (Frank Gunn / The Canadian Press)
Hawkins was born on January 10, 1935 in Huntsville, Arkansas, and his family moved to Fayetteville as a child. He went to college and enlisted in the National Guard and the Army, but for the most part his main interests were cars, girls, and, at the age of 12, music.
Hawkins began playing in local bars in 1953, with young Arkansan Helm joining the group about five years later. In 1959 Hawkins reached an agreement with Roulette Records, which led to minor hits Forty Days and Mary Lou that year, and an appearance at the American Bandstand.
Robertson, a 16-year-old from Toronto, joined for weeks after his television appearance. The rest of the members of what was the Band were found in southwestern Ontario in 1961-62: Danko of Simcoe, Manuel of Stratford and Hudson of London, of classical formation.
Hawkins, Helm wrote in his autobiography, “made us the wildest and fiercest bar band in America.”
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Hawkins favored fast-paced blues-based material, but tried to adapt as music trends changed, recording folk and country albums, although they did not translate into massive success.
By the middle of the decade, his band was getting irritated by Hawkins’ control and the exposed lives of the supporting musicians. Hawkins also had a family life now, after meeting his wife Wanda at the Concord Tavern in Toronto.
“We wanted to explore a deeper musicality,” Robertson told CBC in 2011. “I loved it, but we had to go and find out what was around it.”
Hawkins traveled to San Francisco for the live swan song from The Band’s original lineup, a 1976 concert captured on screen in the iconic rock documentary The Last Waltz. Playing Who Do You Love ?, Hawkins was on the bill with people like Dylan, Van Morrison and Canadians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.
Hawkins enjoyed this bit of revelry and recognition, as he had not always been kind in the early 1970s. For his constantly touring band, it had been a period of a lot of rotation. He was an avid drinker at the time, and those years also included a bankrupt company in a club and a rape in possession of marijuana.
Hawkins would eventually be celebrated at charity shows. For their 60th birthday at Toronto’s Massey Hall, artists included Danko, Helm and Hudson, as well as Sylvia Tyson and Jeff Healey. After his quadruple bypass surgery in 2002, the same year he was honored on the Canada Walk of Fame, a tribute concert with The Tragically Hip and Tom Cochrane, among others.