Dale Hawkins - Biography
By Jimi McCluskey
Many artists have only one big hit song; some of them are here and gone in a flash, but others, like Dale Hawkins, build a long and successful career around that one hit. Sure, he never had another song as well known as "Susie Q," but Hawkins has kept creative in the music business ever since and legions of his fans have followed him throughout his career, whether as a performer, TV show host, or record producer.
One of many musical Hawkins’s to come out of the south in the 1950's, Dale was born Delmar Allen Hawkins in Goldmine, Louisiana on August 22nd 1936. Another Rockabilly firebrand, Ronnie Hawkins, is his first cousin, and Dale's younger brother Jerry would put out three singles for Ebb label that didn't do well at the time but are highly regarded and sought after by Rockabilly collectors. (Neither Country music star Hawkshaw Hawkins or Blues wild man Screamin Jay are known relatives.)
Tragically his parents had split up and his father had died in a fire by the time Dale Hawkins was three years old. For the rest of his childhood he would be passed along to a variety of sharecropping relatives. Eventually Hawkins landed in Bossier City, Louisiana, where he would attend High school.
Unlike most of his fellow Rockabillies, Hawkins had little Country music in his background; he was much more entrenched in the Blues, which was evident when most of his early records tended to do better on the R&B charts than on the Pop. Growing up in sharecropping communities and working the cotton fields from an early age, he was exposed to many aspects of Black Southern life. Loitering around outside the local Black church in order to hear the congregation sing and shout, singing along with the field hollers while picking that cotton, and then--on breaks from the work—breaking out his guitar while others assembled with a variety of rickety instruments, and getting taught the blues first hand. All of these experiences would shape the man and the artist to come. At sixteen, Dale Hawkins enlisted in the Navy and would spend a pretty uneventful year and a half in the service. Upon discharge, Hawkins returned to Shreveport, tinkering with the idea of college but mostly obsessed with making music. He would then put his knowledge of Rhythm & Blues to work at Stan Lewis's record store in Shreveport during the day, while at night he would be singing the blues along the Bossier City strip, a three-mile long stretch that was packed with funky Blues joints, bars and Honky Tonks. Hawkins would hone his craft in such establishments as The Boom Boom Room, The Nite Owl, The Hi-Lo, The It'll Do Club, and many other colorful spots.
Hawkins' band was legendary for being the training ground for many great musicians that would go on to big things with and without Hawkins. Shreveport's "Louisiana Hayride" was a hub of up-and-coming players, and Hawkins' would recruit such talents as James Burton and Fred Carter from its ranks (Burton would gain his biggest fame years later accompanying Ricky Nelson, while Carter would come to prominence once cousin Ronnie Hawkins coerced him over to his band and from there he would become a Nashville session and songwriting legend). Other players of note that played with Hawkins in the 1950's would be the sublime guitar genius Roy Buchanan (who would gain solo fame years later before his tragic ending), Bass player Frank Homer Kirkland, pedal steel notable James "Sonny" Trammell, and Drummers Anthony J. Tuminello and Nick Roppolo. Due to the training ground nature of the band, early on, many members wouldn't even be of age to legally play certain places. Hawkins famously told musician and writer Cub Coda that in the early days it wasn't unusual that "the band would ride to gigs on bicycles."
Soon enough the hard work in the Honkey-Tonks would start to pay off and Hawkins was ready to record. Inspired by his friend Bobby Charles's hit on Chess records—"See You Later Alligator"—Hawkins recorded the demo for an answer song of sorts—"See You Soon Baboon"—in hopes of catching the interest of Chess records. He booked some after hours studio time with local radio station KWKH's engineer Bob Sullivan in the station's studio that was off the air during the middle of the night.
Signing a management deal with local record store owner Stan Lewis, who actually pitched the demo to Chess, things became fast and furious. In June of 1956 Chess records released Hawkins's first single on the Checker subsidiary. The pairing of "See You Soon Baboon" b/w "Four Letter Word," both recorded during the KWHK session, got some notice, but it would be inspiration from of an old dance step that would soon make Hawkins a bona-fide star. Dancers in the 1930's did the Jitterbug, Lindy Hop, and—among others—the Susie-Q, a dance that would inspire many songs throughout the '30s and '40s. The "Susie-Q" that Dale Hawkins and band recorded on February 14th 1957 would sound nothing like any of those previous songs, and nothing much like anything anybody had heard before. With it's hypnotic drumbeat, raunchy guitar lines, and Hawkins unique pleading vocals, a Rock'N'Roll standard was born.
Despite the song's power and Hawkins's growing popularity, Leonard Chess sat on the record, unsure if Chess would even release it. It famously took Jerry Wexler's intervention to get the record released. Legend has it that after hearing the song, Wexler called Hawkins and told him, "You call Leonard and tell him I said 'You either shit or get off the fucking pot!'" When the shocked Hawkins asked him if he should actually say it that way, Wexler added "If he gives you any shit call me back." Three days later the record was released and in stores.
Although only charting as high as number 27 Pop and number 7 R&B on the Billboard charts, the song would long outlast its brief time on the charts. The song was covered countless times by the likes of Credence Clearwater Revival, The Everly Brothers, Rolling Stones, Crew-Cuts, Lonnie Mack, and Linda McCartney to name a few and has been featured in such movies as Apocalypse Now.
A "Susie-Q" album on Chess would soon help cement Hawkins as a popular Rock'N'Roll star. Many great songs followed, including such memorable cuts as "Liza Jane," "Tornado," "La-Do-Dada," and his take on Willie Dixon's "My Babe," to name a few.
Hawkins rode a wave of success that would find him popular with not just white audiences but black audiences as well, exemplified by his being the first white artist to play the legendary Apollo Theatre. His popularity as a recording and performing artist led to Hawkins hosting his own televised dance party, the "Dale Hawkins Show," which became quite popular in its day and featured a range of stars from Connie Francis and Mitch Miller to Lloyd Price and The Drifters.
Dale Hawkins seemed to always turn one success into another, and after his solo career slowed down and TV show was cancelled, he entered the world of record producing, becoming a successful and much sought after producer through the 1960's, producing such acts as the Uniques, Jay & The Americans, and The Dolls before becoming executive vice president of Abnak Records, Vice President, Southwest Division, Bell Records, and A&R director, RCA West Coast Rock Division. During his tenure at RCA in the 1970's he would work with the likes of Harry Nilson and Michael Nesmith.
Creedence Clearwater Revival came into the American popular music conscience in the late '60s with their spell binding extended version of Hawkins' classic "Suzy Q" that would not only help establish the El Cerrito, California quartet, but also remind Rock'N'Roll fans of ones of the greats that hadn't seen the charts for a while. On the strength of this renewed interest, Hawkins revived his recording career.
In 1969 the "LA, Memphis & Tyler, Texas" was released, but, although critically regarded at the time, it wasn't really the big boost that his career needed. Thankfully not lost to history, this fine collection of swampy rock 'n roll was re-issued on the Rev-Ola label in 2007, garnering a lot of overdue appreciation. Amazingly this would be only his second full length LP, heralded at the time as a Swamp Rock masterpiece, and would show Hawkins could compete with the current stars of the day like Creedence, Jerry Reed and others, who owed Hawkins more than just a little bit of appreciation. Recorded with the crème' de la crème' of (especially) Southern musicians, "LA…" featured James Burton, Ry Cooder, Wayne Jackson (Memphis Horns), Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham, and Taj Mahal, to name a few among the outstanding accompaniment. The album featured not only a great reworking of the Jimmy Reed classic "Baby What You Want Me To Do," but also delivered outstanding original material like the title cut and the fabulously swampy "Back Street." Southern rock would come to dominate the American Rock culture within the next few years, and Dale Hawkins laid some of the groundwork with this release.
Over the years Hawkins has stayed active, seemingly only releasing new records when he knows he's got an album's worth of great tunes, as evidenced in 1999's "Wildcat Tamer," which, among other acclaim, got a four star rating in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. Along the way, he has wowed audiences at numerous festivals and club dates over the years as a performer and even in the classroom as a guest artist at the Memphis College of Art.
2007 would also see the release of an album of new material; "Back Down to Louisiana" would show Hawkins as the true master that he is, winning much praise from reviewers and fans worldwide. England's Mojo magazine ranked it #10 on their Americana releases of the year, a year end tally that also put "La, Memphis & Tyler, Texas" at a healthy #8 for top re-issues of the year.
As of the writing of this, Dale Hawkins is still going strong, playing club and festival dates worldwide; just check out his Myspace page for current listings. He has been inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, and in 2007 was inducted into The Louisiana Music Hall Of Fame, but amazingly has yet to make it into the Rock'N'Roll hall of fame. Hopefully that will be fixed sometime soon. Currently there is a film documentary and at least one book about Hawkins in the works to add to the legend of this groundbreaking Rock'N'Roll artist.
