Tales of the Ancient Rocker -- Ronnie Hawkins
'I've played in places so tough
you had to show your razor and puke twice
before they'd let you in'
By Mike Jahn
(Originally published, under a different headline, on September 2, 1972, when $3.25 could buy a pretty good cigar)
The Hawk blew into town recently, spewing one-liners and hoping that his big mouth would bring him fame instead of trouble this time.
Ronnie Hawkins, who now has to his credit the monumental feat of having spent 20 years in the rock business without ever having a hit record, planted himself on the 36th floor of the New York Hilton, unbuttoned his shirt, lit up a $3.25 cigar and started to talk.
"We just had a cab driver that would make a kamikaze pilot look like a coward, " he said.
He leaned back, aimed his mouth at the ceiling and cried out, "Shoot low, Sheriff! They're riding Shetlands!"
This is Ronnie Hawkins, and he was just warming up.
Hawkins, King Henry VIII with an Arkansas accent, was in New York to pick up some press. He feels he needs publicity since his last album, "The Ronnie Hawkins Rock 'n' Roll Resurrection," did not sell. This is not unusual, since none of his records have sold. "I've never exactly gotten a gold record," he said. "I'm the only cat in the industry who's put out one million records and sold one copy each."
So he's not a big seller, but he's hot with the press. This because he is a legendary case of good copy. Everything he says is quotable, though not always in dignified publications. He's a pornographic version of Casey Stengel. And he has what you would have to call a "colorful" past.
"I've been to parties that would make Nero blush," is one of his favorite sayings. "I've played in places that were so tough you had to show your razor and puke twice before they'd let you in.
A Budweiser Belly
Hawkins started in 1952, when he was tossed out of high school after he developed a bad case of Marlon Brando and acquired a motorcycle, a T-shirt and sideburns, and they said, "So long, son." He formed a rock band with him as singer. A rival group in the same area of Arkansas was the Jungle Bush Beaters, led by one Levon Helm. By 1958 he was in and out of the Army, and had a group called Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, with Levon Helm as drummer. They played all over the South,
He made records, all to no avail, then migrated to Canada. Hawkins grew a Budweiser Belly so big that if he walked down the street backwards he would have to put a red flag on it. Eventually, the Hawks included all the people now known as The Band.
Hawkins arid the Hawks became very big in Canada, a position Hawkins still maintains. He owns a 187-acre farm outside Toronto, a smaller place in Toronto, and a club, the Old City Hall Restaurant and Tavern in London, Ontario.
So Hawkins is a hot number in Canada, but the Hawks went on to become world famous. A few years ago he played on the same bill with them, He made $200, and they made $25,000. This annoyed him very much, since he discovered them and assembled them as a band, "I should have left Rick Danko in that butcher shop, " he said.
Hawkins began to unleash his mouth. He began to be quoted in the underground press about when he and the Hawks were at those parties that would make Nero blush. None of the stories are printable here. Not one.
One account came out in Rolling Stone just before the Woodstock Festival in 1969.
"There was going to be a big Ronnie Hawkins deal at Woodstock," Hawkins says. "The Band was going to fly me in by helicopter for a special guest appearance. Albert Grossman (manager of the Band, Dylan and Janis Joplin) was going to manage me. Then they saw that story, and Grossman threw a fit. They all called me and were hollering on the telephone.
"I couldn't understand it. You know, every band worth its salt goes through a wild phase when they're starting out. I kind of thought the boys would like the publicity."
A Farm Club?
Ronnie Hawkins did not play at Woodstock, Albert Grossman did not manage him, and since then, Hawkins claims, Grossman has been raiding Hawkins' backup bands for musicians. Part of Janis Joplin's Full Tilt Boggle were Hawks, he says. Hawkins began to refer to his place in Canada as "Albert Grossman's Farm Club."
Despite this trouble, Hawkins became an "in" sensation in America. At a recording session in Nashville this year for the recent album, some 350 uninvited guests turned up the first night -- including "350 stars/heavies of the highest order," Hawkins says, "Kris Kristofferson and all his friends, all drunk or high, wearing space suits, knocking over mike stands, walking around hollering weird things. We were there all night and got nothing done. It was a great party, though."
Monument Records president Fred Foster, who was paying for the session, did not take it so lightly. "He hired two armed guards to keep people out the second night. He hired them personally. He asked one applicant how good he was at being a guard. The guy said 'I don't mean to brag, but AIR can't get by me.' Fred said, 'You're hired.' The second night, there were these two guys with sawed-off shotguns standing at the doors."
Not all members of the press were happy about being barred. One writer berated the guards. "I write for Rolling Stone," he said.
"'I don't care if you write for the Bible, son, you're not getting in there,' the guard told him."
The record didn't sell, so Hawkins is talking it up, trying to do with publicity what he hasn't done with records. He sat on the 38th floor of the New York Hilton, smoking his 10-inch cigar -- he was named Cigar Smoker of the Year by the Canadian Cigar Institute, and gets them free -- with his shirt opened to allow his belly to threaten the ceiling.
For years he has been producing the kind of records that get up to about 150 on the charts, in the range the trade papers call "bubbling under the Hot 100."
"Make me a hero," he yells at a writer, "I'm tired of bubbling under."
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