The Band – (Part 1) – 1,000 Miles from Toronto to Turkey Scratch

Written by Jim S.

In the late ’60’s, bands like Cream, Vanilla Fudge, and The Jimi Hendrix Experience were trailblazing the way towards long bluesy jams. Howlin’ Wolf’s version of Willie Dixon’s “Spoonful,” is less than three minutes long. On Wheels of Fire, Cream managed to stretch it out to almost seventeen. Into this mix, in 1968, entered The Band. I won’t argue that they were the guys who singlehandedly brought it back to the song and not the musician. But damn near

I had always assumed singer/songwriter Ronnie Hawkins was Canadian since he played there so often. But no, Ronnie – as of this writing still with us at the ripe young age of 82 – was born in Huntsville, Arkansas in the good old US of A. Hawkins started his band The Hawks, while in college, sometime in the mid-50’s.

Around this time, a high school kid and fellow Arkansan (Turkey Scratch!) named Lavon Helm joined the band as drummer. Although the Hawks were touring around Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri, Lavon had to wait till he graduated high school to travel with them.

“The first show I remember [seeing],” says Levon (re-christened that by band members), “was Bill Monroe and His Blue Grass Boys. Boy this really tattooed my brain. They took that old hillbilly music, sped it up, and basically invented what is now known as bluegrass.” He’d go see the big traveling shows when they came to town. “I’d stare at the drummer all night because with those horns and that full rhythm section, the drums always looked like the best seat in the house.”

From Ronnie Hawkins’ bio: “In 1958, on the recommendation of Conway Twitty – who considered Canada to be the promised land for a rock’n roll singer – Hawkins came to Hamilton, Ontario to play a club called The Grange. He never left. Adopting Canada as his home, Hawkins became a permanent resident in 1964.”

By 1959, not only were The Hawks one of the leading bands in Toronto, they were also recording artists. Traveling the circuit from Toronto-to-Arkansas-to-the Jersey Shore, they managed to get a record deal and land a couple of regional hits. They auditioned for Steve Allen but eventually wound up on something called The Dick Clark Beech-Nut Show. Here they are, wildly lip-syncing their hit, “Forty Days.” (Song starts about 1:36.)

In 1960, The Hawks released an album called Mr. Dynamo. Two of the songs were written by an uncredited composer, Toronto native Robbie Robertson. Robertson had met the Hawks when they came to town and his band, The Suedes, opened for them. A duly impressed Robertson, realizing that Hawkins needed songs, wrote a few that the bandleader liked and recorded.

“When I was fifteen,” Robertson says, “I started writing songs. I found that I had a knack for it, it was fun, and it came kind of easy.” Remember that statement for later when we talk about The Band’s songwriting controversy.

Robertson’s mother was a Mohawk who had grown up on the Six Nations Reserve, southwest of Toronto. This is where Robertson said he first caught the “power of music.” A couple of relatives were playing guitar and, “it rang my bell – the sound, the rhythm, the fingers on the strings, the voices blending together in unison and then slipping into harmonies.”

Hawkins, impressed by both Robertson’s songwriting skills and guitar playing, invited him down to Arkansas to replace either the bassist or guitarist, depending on who quit first. So our intrepid guitarist and incipient songwriter – all of sixteen years old – made his way by bus and train through every whistle stop down to Fayetteville, AK. (1,130 mi, due southwest.)

At this point in time, the guitarist in the band was a guy named Fred Carter, Jr. Carter is that legendary type of guitar player that maybe you never heard of who is so prevalent in the South. Prior to joining The Hawks, he’d been a guitarist for Roy Orbison and later, Dale Hawkins, who’d written “Suzie Q” and recorded it with James Burton.

Fred got hired by Dale’s cousin Ronnie right out from under his nose. Years later, Carter had a distinguished career playing with Dylan (John Wesley Harding, Nashville Skyline) and it is his guitar you hear at the beginning of “The Boxer.”

So Robertson became the bass player and now two pieces of the band that would become The Band were in place. As I recall from Robertson’s autobiography, Carter showed very little respect to Robertson as a guitar player and Robbie had to work hard to earn it. (I don’t care where or with whom you play. This behavior is common among musicians. Part male, macho bullshit and part “prove you’re good enough to get up on stage with me.”)

Robertson was duly impressed not only with the playing prowess of his bandmates – he loved Levon – but also in the ability of Ronnie and Levon to – as the Brits like to say – “pull birds.”

According to Robertson, “Almost every night girls came back to the hotel after the gig. … I watched Ronnie and Levon closely trying to learn the tricks of the trade from the masters.” Oh, brother. Wish I had a buck for every rock and roller who got into music to “meet chicks.”

The Hawks took up residence at a club called Le Coq d’Or on Yonge Street in Toronto. From what I’ve read, back then it was a swinging hotspot. I believe there is now an HMV there. But Toronto seems to still pretty much be a great music town, given how many times people play and/or record at El Mocambo. For just one fact.

le-coq-d-or-2

Fred Carter Jr. had given his notice and Hawkins wasn’t crazy about replacing him with the still inexperienced Robertson. So he decided to audition another Arkansan who had played with his cousin Dale, Roy Buchanan. If you don’t know who Buchanan was and what a great player he was, check this out. (My friend Bill and I tried to see Roy two or three times before he passed away but he always canceled due to being in a drunk tank if I recall correctly.)

For personal reasons, not the least of which – according to both Helm and Robertson – involved Buchanan saying that he was half human and half wolf and would eventually marry a nun – Hawkins decided to pass. “That shit’s too damn weird for me,” Hawkins said. He turned to Robertson and said, “You better start playing real good real fast, that’s all I can tell you.”

Buchanan didn’t entirely disappear from their lives. He came back to do an on-stage guitar duel with Robbie and recorded at least one tune with the Hawks, a blistering version of the great Bo Diddley song, “Who Do You Love.” I guess Robbie acquitted himself ok because here he’s on guitar, Buchanan on bass:

By late 1961, Hawkins’ bass player was ready to move on. Opening for the Hawks one night was a band that included a rhythm guitar player who could sing “in a voice reminiscent of Sam Cooke.” According to Robertson, “You can just spot a musician who’s got the goods. You can sense it in an almost tribal way.”

And so Rick Danko, advised that he would have to learn the bass, was convinced to join the Hawks. And now by fall of 1961, three pieces (Danko, Robertson, and Helm) of the band that would become The Band were in place. As far as any of them knew at that point, their foreseeable future was with The Hawks.

Next post – Levon and the Hawks cross paths with a guy named Zimmerman. 

Sources: Wikipedia; Ronnie Hawkins’ online bio; Testimony, Robbie Robertson; This Wheel’s On Fire, Levon Helm; The Last Waltz, Martin Scorsese.

33 thoughts on “The Band – (Part 1) – 1,000 Miles from Toronto to Turkey Scratch”

  1. Great retrospective, Jim (and coincidental, since I just watched “The Last Waltz” last Sat. night). I learned a lot that I didn’t know before. Dick Clark had a show sponsored by Beech-Nut gum?? Ronnie Hawkins was an Arkansan, not a Canadian? And I knew nothing about the connection with Roy Buchanan, the only man who could make a guitar cry. What a talent, and a tragic soul. I attended boarding school outside Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where he was very popular. His “The Messiah Will Come Again” was a regular part of WYDD’s playlist.

    Look forward to Part 2!

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    1. I knew a fair amount about The Band. Or so I thought. I didn’t know any of that stuff either. Buchanan – had he not been such an oddball – might well have been a member of The Band and not Robertson. I can still remember when Buchanan became what I’ll call:”FM famous.” PBS did a documentary on him in the early ’70’s and that catapulted him to that level of fame. Years later, my friend Bill and I were literally sitting at a Cambridge club waiting to see him when they canceled the show. I think something like this happened twice. A damn shame.

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      1. His cancellation must’ve been a huge disappointment. In the mid-1980s I worked at a jazz-blues station here in Cincinnati, Ohio. Buchanan came to town, and my station sponsored his show. The station blues host (Scott “Downtown” Brown!) introduced him to the crowd, and afterwards partied with Buchanan backstage. He remembers Buchanan drinking (and toking) heavily. A few years later, when I hear about his suicide, I remembered what Brown had said about him that night. He was definitely a tortured soul. He poured his demons into his guitar playing, but they unfortunately caught up with him at last.

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  2. I was going to wait to weigh in on this one. I think you’d appreciate all the things that went into form ‘The Band’. Working with Hawkins, Levon’s southern influences, playing live in shit holes around Ontario which in those days was a tough place, real tough. They learned to play and earned everything they got (financially not much). The synergy these guys had was special. Like their kindred spirits just across the border in New Jersey they always give credit to the influences and the musicians that came before them. Listen to ‘Back To Memphis’. I could listen to that song all day. When they do covers you can hear the love and passion they have for other peoples music. Their original music is second to none and is such a mix of all the great blues, jazz, country, hillbilly and rock n roll that they had heard. They brought Robbie’s songs to life. Great piece Jim, I could shoot my mouth off a lot longer but I’ll spare you. I think you know where these guys stand in CB’s musical bones. Garth, Richard, Levon and Robbie. Man what a great gumbo!

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    1. ‘Back to Memphis.’ A great, if fairly obscure Chuck Berry song. I wasn’t sure what album it was on but it turns out it’s an outtake from the terrific ‘Moondog Matinee.’ These CD re-releases can be a real treasure trove of stuff. It’s funny but when you listen to ‘Music from Big Pink,’ you can hear the influences, but they had by then pretty much dropped the R&B and bluesy stuff. Everybody else was doing it so they didn’t. They were intentionally contrary and look at the impact they had.

      BTW, don’t forget Danko. All the parts work together.

      In case anybody reads these comments, here’s ‘Back to Memphis.’ Commenters seem to think this was recorded at Watkins Glen, 1973 since Bill Graham’s doing the introductions.

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      1. I’m listening to ‘Memphis’ as I type. “Barefoot in my pajamas” . Not forgetting Danko. (His solo album will be coming up on a CB take). You are so right about “All the parts work together”, that’s from all those shows they played learning to be ‘The Band’. Tight. I like the “contrary”bit, that fits. Like I said Jim you just set me off down different paths with your comments. While we or I’m on covers, check out Levon doing ‘Summertime Blues’ on SCTV. Fantastic. Does anybody feel it more than Helm? You hit a vein with CB.

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        1. I checked out that SCTV clip. Nice. Interesting that one commenter brought up Harold Kudlets, From the books about the band I learned that ‘Colonel’ Kudlets was a manager of the Hawks. What I didn’t know is that he was Eugene Levy’s uncle!

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        2. SCTV had great musical guests. The Levon one stuck. You remember those days when seeing someone like Helm on tv was like a Sasquatch siting. Rare. Now it’s at our finger tips. Love that history. “Colonel Kudlets” sounds like a SCTV skit.

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        3. That’s funny. Actually I think it was Ronnie that gave him the “Colonel” nickname after Elvis’ Col. Sanders. They were both Colonels about as much as I am.

          As to the books, both are good, fairly quick reads. Levon’s is more about his influences and then life during and after The Band. Robbie’s is a wilder ride as he’s got some, shall we say, ‘connected’ guys in his family.

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        4. That is funny. Sounds like something Hawkins would do. Like I said I could keep going on these guys for a while. I’ll leave you with this. There is something in The Bands music that really gets to CB.(Similar to Springsteen). I would bore the shit out of you trying to explain it. I guess it’s the sense of place, the characters, images, feel. They sing about people and things I know or have some sort of connection too. It’s all in the music. Maybe it’s the Canadian/American thing. I don’t know. I do know that it’s some of my favorite stuff. Thanks for putting in the time and thought for a great piece.

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  3. I typed my original response twice. Lost it the first time and lost Rick with it. That must of stood out like a sore thumb. And I call myself a “Band Guy”.

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      1. I knew a bunch of crazy rounders from London/Hamilton Ont. who seen The Band back in the early days. These guys were a lot older than CB and could they drink. It was wild in some of those bars. How is that book? The last one I read was ‘Across the Great Divide’

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    2. Listened to some of this last night, pick up on it today. A lot of is in his book but still fun to listen to him tell it. Never get tired of the “we ripped off Paul Butterfield’s stash” story. 😀

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  5. Random thought; I have WordPress set up to show thumbnail pictures of related posts. When I first posted this, the three thumbnails were Eric Clapton, Fabulous Thunderbirds, and Music from Big Pink. Now I see the third one has been replaced by Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. No big deal. But Wha?

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    1. No their stuff is timeless. That’s the beauty of it. When I write a series I tend to immerse myself in a band’s music. So I’m currently enjoying that ride.

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  7. Very interesting reading about the Roy connection. Sorry you never got the chance to see him live. I had the privilege of seeing him 5 or 6 times when he would come out to California. You couldn’t have picked a better video of him either. Awesome!!

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  8. Yes it was just not meant to be. I know that at least once, if not both times, we were left “standing at the altar. ” My friend Bill remembers and says on at least one of those occasions we wound up watching his opener, some rockabilly guy. And yeah, that video is great. Thank you YouTube!

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  9. I’m over 100 pages in and really enjoying it. I was reluctant because RR had been rubbing me the wrong way over the years.I guess because the media made him the spokesman for the group and to me they were always a band in the best sense of the word. I just got bored with him (not his music) and the talk. Probably more of a media thing but also I was pissed that they packed it in and I Guess I kinda blamed him.
    Also the reluctance came from my own knowledge of the group (not the end all and be all but I did pick up some things over the years). I really enjoyed ‘Across the Great Divide’. I am getting a feeling it’s some kind of amends of some kind. Just a feel I’m getting.
    All that aside Robbie is redeeming himself with me. He is a walking talking historian of that time and place from his perspective and what a perspective it is. I’m just at the point where all the members of The Band are now in the Hawks and wood-shedding at Ronnie’s insistence (he didn’t know he was fostering these guys to leave him). Just all the influence these guys were soaking up. I knew it but to hear RR talk about how vast and just the great stuff that they were listening to. He talks about popular music being at a dry spell in the early 60’s that didnt mean there wasn’t great music under the surface and these guys were finding it by the truckload. Thank Christ. Also when he talked about the folk movement and not his bag. That’s CB to a tee. It certainly wasn’t in their leanings coming from all that hard shit they were listening to and playing.
    Last thing for now Doc is I’m not a musician and his talking about the different guitar styles from the people he was listening to and the different guitars etc is very interesting to me. You must of dug that big time. I was thinking that every time he went into someones playing and equipment. I really like what Robertsons doing with this book. He’s a smart guy.
    Maybe Ill pop back on your different takes to yak about the different stages. It’s a good story.

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    1. ;Wow, CB really gets into it here. Thoughts:

      Interesting your feelings about Robbie. I always kinda liked the guy, although he kinda got a little full of himself. Great songwriter, good (but I don’t think great) guitar player.

      I liked the book a lot too. Forget about it. Sent it to my buddy Steve a while back, don’t know if he ever read it. The Hawks and then The Band were traveling in their own little world. They weren’t some band (like so many) that formed because of The Beatles. They were already at it. It’s funny that the folk stuff wasn’t their bag and then yet – Dylan!

      I dug the guitar stuff but I never hear those flashes of brilliance in his playing. Now, Roy Buchanan who shows up in the book – there’s a guy.

      I welcome CB’s further ruminations on the series.

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      1. I like Robertson too but I think he went Hollywood for a while and scratched that itch and found there’s not much there. I bet the other boys had a few thoughts on that one. They were no bullshit guys.
        Definitely traveled their own path and found each other. All that shit they soaked up. No wonder I like them. You can hear it in everything they do. Yeah Doc it really is my kind of music, all those styles I love, blues, jazz, country and rock n roll from the masters.
        The folk thing I stick my toe in a wee bit. Like the idea more than the sound. You know I keep it positive but you can imagine how Baez doing ‘Dixie’ rubbed me. Dylan? Well I think they turned him electric. Bob is a smart guy and saw and heard a good thing and knew it.
        The whole Buchanan thing is interesting.
        If it doesn’t bother you I will check in again. Being music guys and music history guys it’s a good read. Later fella.

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        1. I think the other guys were more pissed that they thought Robertson took more credit for Band songwriting than he should have.. That definitely comes up. As to the Band’s output, isn’t it funny that minus songs like ‘Acadian Driftwood,” they sound like Americana.

          I think the Band can definitely take some credif for “turning him electric.” But so can Al Kooper, Mike Bloomfield. Not to mention the Stones and Beatles. Dylan was in rock and roll bands before he turned folkie. He admitted to being as much influenced by Little Richard as Woody Guthrie.
          Check in early and often.

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        2. I would have been pissed too. His side will come up. I’ll be interested how he spins that.
          I was being a little general with the “turning electric” you’re right on those other guys. All those guys including Bob wanted to be Elvis, Chuck, Jerry Lee, Carl etc. It’s rock n roll, it changed the world. later.

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        3. Read it first and see what you think. Robbie later makes the point – if I recall correctly – of “if they’re songwriters, what did they write AFTER The Band.” I think that’a a fair point. John Fogerty always made the same point. Guys always want credit but really there’s no band with four or five good songwriters. The Beatles had three and that’s pretty rare .

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        4. I get some of that but as a member are they not helping to create the sound of the music that goes into the song. Their musical ideas. I heard certain bands give an even cut. Creates a more happy environment. Probably keeps the band together.
          I’m sure the idea guy could take a bigger cut but everyone else gets a piece for their contribution. The Band were not mega sellers. I don’t thing any of their solo records (maybe Robertsons first) did a lot of commercial business. Danko’s first solo sounds like a Band record.
          Also we are getting RRs take on it. I’m sure there’s a case from the other members. Sort of like the Who. Daltrey was the voice just like Danko, Helm and Manuel were the singers in the band. It’s interesting. I really don’t think any of them were rolling in the dough. I know there was hard feelings and it usually comes down to $$$$. I’d have to get all the details before I made a final opinion and that probably won’t happen. So I will block the horseshit out and enjoy what they did together.

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        5. I actually kinda agree with you. U2 has done this since Day One and they’ve now been around for forty years. Unfortunately, most bands won’t do this. And does anybody anywhere think Lennon/McCartney songs should be credited to The Beatles? Hell, even Ringo and George never said that. By the same token,, when I was reading that book I remember thinking “Would it kill Robbie to share some credit on some songs where it made sense?” They may or may not have stayed together but there would have been less animosity But to your point, it was kinda their problem. Just enjoy the book for the ride that it is.

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        6. I think we are both on the same page with that point. Not black and white. I’ll check in after another 100 pages. It’s a good read. You and Earl did good.

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