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Ronnie Hawkins
Bo Diddley / Who Do You Love - 7"
Roulette - 1963
Michael Panontin
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If you were young and living in Ontario's largest city in the 1960s, you would have been comatose not to have heard the words 'Toronto Sound'.
The Toronto Sound was more of a spirit than an actual genre, and the groups involved were all over the map, playing anything from guitar-heavy, Hammond B3-laden R&B to sweaty soul to mop-headed garage rock. But its roots lay in that driving Bo Diddley beat, and for that Canada can probably thank Ronnie Hawkins.
The Arkansas-born singer cut his teeth playing rockabilly in the crusty clubs around Memphis. But it was in 1958 that he and his band, which included a very young Levon Helm, got a call from Conway Twitty advising them to venture north of the border.
Most Canadians at the time were into jazz or country music. So when this fast-talking dynamo with a southern drawl showed up playing hopped-up hillbilly music, people took notice. "On the first night there were three people in the club," Hawkins would tell Hit Parader in 1969. "[But] Friday we were nearly full and the same Saturday. So the owner gave us another week. The crowd on Monday beat Saturday and by Wednesday they were lined up outside the club."
Hawkins, who had not yet charted a single record, was equally in thrall to Canada, especially the hopping, neon-lit scene on Toronto's Yonge Street. He returned and eventually decided to make it his new home. In 1963, as the unofficial 'mayor of Yonge Street', he opened up his own club, the Hawk's Nest, above the Le Coq d'Or near Yonge and Dundas. He had also assembled a talented group of backing musicians called the Hawks that included Helm, Robbie Robertson, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson.
Hawkins had issued a number of singles for Morris Levy's Roulette label but was never what you would call successful. "I'm the only cat in the industry who's put out one million records and sold one copy each," he once joked. His highest-charting record in the US was a modest #26 placing for his 1959 cover of 'Mary Lou'.
He was known as much for his tall tales as for his witty anecdotes and once claimed to have picked cotton with a young Elias McDaniel. With Hawkins' passing in 2022, the truth will probably never be known. But his debt to McDaniel, a.k.a. Bo Diddley, specifically that signature five-accent hambone rhythm, is without question. Hawkins' first release in fact was a raucous, lo-fi rendition of 'Hey! Bo Diddley' in the late-fifties. That recording was raw as hell, but failed to chart. And so by early '63, it was time to bring out the big guns.
Hawkins went down to NYC in February of that year, and he brought along with him the tightest band in all of Toronto, the product of many nights spent rehearsing until 4 AM. He and the Hawks (without Hudson on this trip) recorded a couple of Bo Diddley standards, his eponymous 1955 R&B #1, 'Bo Diddley', and the oft-covered 'Who Do You Love' from the following year. The result was a double-sided desert island disc if ever there was one.
'Bo Diddley' only bubbled under in the US, limping to an underwhelming #117 on the Billboard charts. But up here in Hawkins' adopted home, it sold well, cracking the top ten. Hawkins' interpretation betrayed strong country influences, especially with Manuel's honky tonk piano wafting in and out of the mix, and perhaps that is why it managed to lasso Canadian audiences so well. Helm and Danko's driving locomotive beat is superb and Hawkins' vocal, at times just a high-pitched wail, never sounded so potent. Equally great is 'Who Do You Love' over on the back side. It was a staple in Hawkins' live performances for years, but Robertson's razor-sharp guitar licks make this one of the definitive versions of the song.
The Hawks parted ways with Hawkins the following year. While their trajectory was pointed firmly to the stratosphere - they would accompany Dylan on his '65/'66 world tour and then achieve their own international success as the Band - Hawkins' career was considerably less impressive. He continued to release records well into the seventies, including a decent brass and gospel-infused reworking of 'Bo Diddley' in 1973, but there were few hits.
Hawkins once claimed - in the late sixties no less - that "I have never in my life picked up a Beatle album, and listened to it. Never". It was no doubt his usual hyperbole, but it probably helped explain how such a talented rocker could become so irrelevant. In 1976, he was invited on stage to sing 'Who Do You Love' with his erstwhile bandmates in Martin Scorcese's The Last Waltz. He nailed it of course, but the irony of having to play third fiddle to his one-time proteges must have been a bitter pill to swallow. Still, when Hawkins passed away, he was honoured, to quote journalist Eric Alper - without hyperbole - as "the single most important rock 'n' roller in the history of Canada".
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