Artist

Ronnie Hawkins

Huntsville, United States • 1935 – 2022

Ronnie Hawkins is a musician from Huntsville, United States, active 1935–2022. Their discography on Gatefold includes 10 records.

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1935

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Biography

Ronnie Hawkins OC (born Ronald Hawkins on 20 January 1935; died 29 May 2022) was an American/Canadian rock and roll musician whose career spanned more than half a century. He recorded solo and, in early recordings, as Ronnie Hawkins & The Hawks. His career began in Arkansas, where he was born and raised. He found success in Ontario, Canada, and lived there for most of his life. He is remembered as very influential in the establishment and evolution of rock music in Canada.

The Arc of Ronnie Hawkins

The pivots — what forced Ronnie Hawkins to reinvent.

The Roulette Rockabilly Blitz
Between 1959 and 1961, Morris Levy put Hawkins in New York studios to cut wild, raw rockabilly that felt dangerous compared to the clean teen idol pop of the era. With Levon Helm on drums and Jimmy Ray Paulman on guitar, Hawkins laid down hyper-fast versions of blues and country tunes that relied on pure adrenaline. You hear the raw power of this era on 'Forty Days' and 'Mary Lou,' where the rhythm section plays with a frantic, driving urgency that was almost extinct in America. This was the blueprint that established Hawkins as a force in the Canadian bar circuit.
The Classic Hawks Era
By 1961, Hawkins had replaced his original Arkansas players with young Canadian musicians including Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, and Garth Hudson. He drilled this group for hours in Ontario clubs, forcing them to play with machine-like precision while keeping the volume deafening. The resulting sound was a heavy, blues-drenched rock and roll that was far ahead of its time, culminating in the 1963 single 'Who Do You Love.' When the band left him in 1964, they took that exact hard-edged chemistry straight to Bob Dylan's historic 1966 world tour.
The Muscle Shoals Revival
In 1970, Hawkins signed with Atlantic Records and went down to Alabama to cut 'The Hawk' at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio with the legendary swamp-rock session crew. Producer Jerry Wexler wanted to capture Hawkins's gravelly holler surrounded by the greasy, laid-back Southern soul rhythm of the Swampers and Duane Allman's slide guitar. The record stripped away the frantic rockabilly tempo in favor of heavy, slow-burning country-soul grooves. It proved Hawkins could survive the album era without his teenage disciples by leaning on the best session players in the world.

Influences

Bo Diddley — Hawkins covered 'Who Do You Love' in 1963, transforming the original hoodoo stomp into a menacing, high-speed rock assault. You can hear Diddley's heavy, syncopated rhythm pattern driving the bass and drums on Hawkins's early Roulette cuts. The raw, distorted guitar work Robbie Robertson played on those tracks was a direct attempt to mimic Diddley's violent tremolo sound.
Hank Williams — Hawkins dedicated an entire tribute album to Williams in 1960, cutting stripped-down rockabilly versions of Hank's classic catalog. You hear the high, lonesome country phrasing underneath Hawkins's aggressive rock vocals on tracks like 'Jambalaya.' Hawkins used Williams's straight-ahead songwriting structures as the foundation for his live sets.
Chuck Berry — Hawkins covered 'Thirty Days' as 'Forty Days' for his debut single on Roulette Records in 1959. The track borrows Berry's signature double-stop guitar intro and rapid-fire lyrical delivery almost note-for-note. Berry's fusion of country storytelling with jump-blues guitar lines became the standard playbook for every lineup of the Hawks.
Howlin' Wolf — Hawkins frequently cited Wolf as his favorite singer and covered 'Goin' Down Slow' to capture that same guttural, throat-tearing vocal delivery. You hear Wolf's heavy, menacing vocal drag in the way Hawkins pushes his voice past its limits on his bluesier studio tracks. The emphasis on heavy, repetitive bass riffs in Hawkins's band arrangements comes directly from Wolf's Chicago blues records.
Elvis Presley — Hawkins attended Presley's early live shows in Arkansas and modeled his own high-energy stage antics, including the backflips and camel walk, on Elvis's physical performance style. You hear the early Sun Records echo and hiccuping vocal style on Hawkins's 1959 self-titled LP. Hawkins took the raw blueprint of Elvis's early rockabilly sound and turned the volume and aggression up to ten.