Ted Hawkins (October 28, 1936 – January 1, 1995) was an American singer-songwriter born in
Biloxi, Mississippi
Biloxi ( ; ) is a city in Harrison County, Mississippi, United States. It lies on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast in southern Mississippi, bordering the city of Gulfport, Mississippi, Gulfport to its west. The adjacent cities ar ...
.
He split his time between his adopted hometown of
Venice Beach, California, where he was a mostly anonymous street performer, and Europe and Australia, where he and his songs were better known and well received in
clubs
Club may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media
* Club (magazine), ''Club'' (magazine)
* Club, a ''Yie Ar Kung-Fu'' character
* Clubs (suit), a suit of playing cards
* Club music
* "Club", by Kelsea Ballerini from the album ''kelsea''
Brands a ...
and small
concert hall
A concert hall is a cultural building with a stage (theatre), stage that serves as a performance venue and an auditorium filled with seats.
This list does not include other venues such as sports stadia, dramatic theatres or convention ...
s.
Life and career
Hawkins was born in
Biloxi, Mississippi
Biloxi ( ; ) is a city in Harrison County, Mississippi, United States. It lies on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast in southern Mississippi, bordering the city of Gulfport, Mississippi, Gulfport to its west. The adjacent cities ar ...
. His mother was a prostitute and he never knew the identity of his father. He was sent to a reform school when he was 12 years old.
As a teenager Hawkins drifted,
hitchhiked, and stole his way across the country for the next dozen years, earning several stays in prison, including a three-year stint for stealing a leather jacket as a teenager. Along the way, he picked up a love of music and a talent for the guitar. "I was sent to a school for bad boys called
Oakley Training School in 1949," he wrote in a brief piece of autobiography. "There I developed my voice by singing with a group that the superintendent's wife had got together." After reform school, he ended up in the state penitentiary and was released at 19. "Then I heard a singer whose name was
Sam Cooke
Samuel Cooke (; January 22, 1931 – December 11, 1964) was an American singer and songwriter. Considered one of the most influential soul music, soul artists of all time, Cooke is commonly referred to as the "King of Soul" for his distin ...
. His voice did something to me."
For the next ten years or so he drifted in and out of trouble around the country, living in Chicago, Buffalo, Philadelphia, and Newark.
In the middle of the mid-1960s
folk music
Folk music is a music genre that includes #Traditional folk music, traditional folk music and the Contemporary folk music, contemporary genre that evolved from the former during the 20th-century folk revival. Some types of folk music may be ca ...
boom Hawkins set out for California to try for a professional singing career.
He recorded several tunes without commercial success, worked at odd jobs, and took up
busking
Street performance or busking is the act of performing in public places for gratuity, gratuities. In many countries, the rewards are generally in the form of money but other gratuities such as food, drink or gifts may be given. Street performa ...
along the piers and storefronts of Venice Beach as a way to supplement his income. Hawkins made ends meet by developing a small following of locals and tourists who would come to hear this Southern black man, sitting on an overturned milk crate, play blues and folk standards and a few original songs in his signature open guitar tuning and raspy vocal style. Hawkins claimed the rasp in his voice came from the damage done by years of singing in the sand and spray of the boardwalk.
A series of record producers and promoters "discovered" Hawkins over the years, only to be thwarted by circumstance and Hawkins's unconventional life. The first was the
musicologist
Musicology is the academic, research-based study of music, as opposed to musical composition or performance. Musicology research combines and intersects with many fields, including psychology, sociology, acoustics, neurology, natural sciences, f ...
and blues producer
Bruce Bromberg, who approached Hawkins about a recording contract in the early 1970s.
Hawkins tentatively agreed and recorded some dozen songs for Bromberg, but Hawkins faced legal trouble and spent much of the next decade in prison and addicted to heroin. Bromberg lost contact with Hawkins until 1982, when was able to get him to agree to release the previously recorded songs as an album, ''
Watch Your Step'', which was released by
Rounder Records
Rounder Records is an independent record label founded in 1970 in Somerville, Massachusetts, by Marian Leighton Levy, Ken Irwin, and Bill Nowlin. Focused on American roots music, Rounder's catalogue of more than 3000 titles includes records by A ...
in 1982.
This debut album was a commercial failure but received rave reviews (notably a rare five-star rating in ''
Rolling Stone
''Rolling Stone'' is an American monthly magazine that focuses on music, politics, and popular culture. It was founded in San Francisco, California, in 1967 by Jann Wenner and the music critic Ralph J. Gleason.
The magazine was first known fo ...
'').
In December 1984, Hawkins was released from the California State Medical Facility at Vacaville, after serving 18 months of a three-year sentence on a child molestation charge (due to indecent exposure in the midst of suffering nervous breakdowns). Hawkins reunited with Bromberg in 1985 for a second album, ''
Happy Hour''.
This album featured more original songs by Hawkins and was again ignored in the U.S.; however, it won acclaim and sales in Europe. English radio DJ
Andy Kershaw encouraged Hawkins to come to the United Kingdom, and he moved to the resort town of
Bridlington
Bridlington (previously known as Burlington) is a seaside town and civil parish in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. It is on the Holderness part (Flamborough Head to the Humber estuary) of the Yorkshire Coast by the North Sea. The town is ...
in 1986 and enjoyed his first taste of commercial musical success, touring Europe and Asia. However, after four years in England, in 1990 he was deported back to the United States by the British Government, ostensibly on drug-related charges, although Hawkins later dismissed this by saying the reason was simply "I was having visa problems...they deported me. My time ran out. England is a good place. It’s just that I had a lot of bills back home and I hadn’t seen my family. I had to get back home."
During this period Hawkins refined his musical style, a mixture of folk music,
country music
Country (also called country and western) is a popular music, music genre originating in the southern regions of the United States, both the American South and American southwest, the Southwest. First produced in the 1920s, country music is p ...
, Deep South
spirituals, and
soul music
Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in African-American culture, African-American African-American neighborhood, communities throughout the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Catchy rhythms, stressed by handclaps ...
.
His style was informed by but did not resemble traditional
blues music (Hawkins claimed he could not play the blues because with his damaged fretting hand—he wore a leather glove to protect his fingers—he was unable to bend notes).
In 1987, the documentary filmmaker
Nick Shaw approached Hawkins about producing a profile of his life and times, for which he followed Hawkins closely for the next two years. The documentary was eventually taken up by the
Arts Council of Great Britain, but it has never been formally released. Some of the footage was included in the film ''Amazing Grace'', produced by
David Geffen.
Despite the recognition and fame he received in Europe, Hawkins was restless and moved back to California in the early 1990s and again took on the role of a street performer. Several musicians and promoters encouraged Hawkins to record, but he did so only on occasion and without much enthusiasm, until he agreed to record a full album for
Geffen Records
Geffen Records (formerly The David Geffen Company from 1980 to 1992 and Geffen Records Inc. from 1993 to 2004) is an American record label, founded in late 1980 by David Geffen. Originally a music subsidiary of the company known as Geffen Pi ...
and producer Tony Berg. For this first major-label release, ''
The Next Hundred Years'',
Berg added
session musician
A session musician (also known as studio musician or backing musician) is a musician hired to perform in a recording session or a live performance. The term sideman is also used in the case of live performances, such as accompanying a reco ...
s to Hawkins's typical solo guitar-and-vocal arrangements for the first time, and brought national attention and respectable sales to Hawkins (though Hawkins, in typically contrary fashion, claimed to dislike the result, preferring his unaccompanied versions). Hawkins began to tour on the basis of this success, commenting that he had finally reached an age where he was glad to be able to sing indoors, out of the weather, and for an appreciative crowd. He died of a stroke at the age of 58, just a few months after the release of his breakthrough recording.
His widow, Elizabeth Hawkins, sold the rights for a film version of Hawkins's life story.
Hawkins is the subject of
Mick Thomas's song "57 Years". In the novel ''The Island'' (2010), by R J Price (better known as the poet
Richard Price), the fictional Graham and Linda are brought together at a concert by Hawkins in Glasgow, Scotland.
''Cold and Bitter Tears: The Songs of Ted Hawkins'' was released in late 2015 by Eight 30 Records, based in Austin, Texas. The album was produced by Kevin Russell, Jenni Finlay and Brian T. Atkinson and features
James McMurtry ("Big Things"),
Kasey Chambers ("Cold and Bitter Tears"),
Mary Gauthier ("Sorry You're Sick"),
Shinyribs ("Who Got My Natural Comb") and several others singing songs by Hawkins.
In 2014, in cooperation with his family, the Killer Blues Headstone Project placed a headstone for Ted Hawkins at Ingelwood Park Cemetery in Inglewood, California.
Discography
Hawkins also appears on the
Geffen Records
Geffen Records (formerly The David Geffen Company from 1980 to 1992 and Geffen Records Inc. from 1993 to 2004) is an American record label, founded in late 1980 by David Geffen. Originally a music subsidiary of the company known as Geffen Pi ...
1996 compilation ''
Just Say Noël''.
References
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Hawkins, Ted
1938 births
1995 deaths
American street performers
People from Biloxi, Mississippi
Soul-blues musicians
Contemporary blues musicians
American blues guitarists
American male guitarists
People from Venice, Los Angeles
Singers from Los Angeles
Singer-songwriters from Mississippi
Rounder Records artists
American blues singer-songwriters
DGC Records artists
Geffen Records artists
20th-century American singer-songwriters
20th-century American guitarists
Guitarists from Los Angeles
Guitarists from Mississippi
Blues musicians from Mississippi
20th-century American writers
20th-century American male musicians
American male singer-songwriters
Singer-songwriters from California