by Levon Helm
In the dark of night I’d lie in my bed and listen to the train whistles in the distance. I wanted—I needed—to go. To me the prettiest sight in the world was a ’57 Cadillac rolling down the road with a doghouse bass tied to the top. That looked like the car I wanted to be in.
Soon I’d get my chance. My day would come.
Chapter Two
THE HAWK (OUT FOR BLOOD)
I must have been fifteen when I started going up to Memphis to see the musicians who were inventing rock and roll. It wasn’t long after that I became one of those kids that had to stay out all night, who just couldn’t go home. One night I managed to sneak into the Delta Supper Club in West Helena, which was the local watering hole where everyone played. You could see Conway there, or Sonny Burgess and the Pacers. The ceiling was a little low, but it wasn’t too bad a place to play. It had a stage like a little band shell, and Mutt Cagle always insisted it had the best dance floor in the South. Air conditioning was a No. 3 tub and a block of ice set in front of a big window fan. They’d set up a couple of those on a hot Saturday night, and people’d stand the sweltering heat for the high quality of the music and the good time that came with it.
The Delta Supper Club was one tough place. It had a big seam running down the middle of the bar where it had been glued back together after an ejected customer stormed back in with a chain saw and cut the bar in half. As rowdy as the place was, I’ve seen rowdier times playing fraternity parties in Oklahoma. You could still go in and out of the club without a fistfight, although if you wanted that kind of action someone would certainly accommodate you. It had a good jukebox and was just a regular dance-hall kind of bar, a bottle bar like all the bars in the South. You bring your bottle, and they provide the ice, glasses, and food.
One night I’m in there listening to Conway Twitty and the Rock Housers, who were the best band around. Oh boy, were they good. Conway was from Friars Point, Mississippi, but moved to Helena when he was about ten so his daddy could pilot Charlie Halbert’s ferryboat. His first band was the Phillips County Ramblers, a country-style group, but that changed when Elvis’s “Mystery Train” inspired young Mr. Jenkins to begin writing rockabilly songs. He went up to Memphis and worked with some of the Sun musicians, like Elvis, Carl Perkins, and Jerry Lee, and often came through our area with a series of good bands.
So I’m in the Delta Supper Club, and Conway’s doing “Jenny, Jenny,” and the place is just going nuts. He had all the rockabilly moves—the stutter, the twitches, the strut—and the band, led by Jimmy Ray Paulman on guitar, provided a raw rockabilly jolt. The girls loved Conway’s big, heavy-lidded good looks and long hair that reminded ’em a little of Elvis. The dancers are jitterbugging and working up a sweat, and I take a swig of my beer and work up the courage to ask to sit in for a song, since Conway was known for giving the young ones a shot.
“Sure, son,” he said between sets, after I’d reminded him of the time my sister and I had opened for him on the porch of our little store in Midway. “Last song of the next set. Just come up and do whatever you want.” So I got up and probably did one of Sonny Boy Williamson’s things, and that might have been my debut as a singer in front of a band. I can’t tell you what a feeling it gave me to be up on that stage. I was in high cotton! After the show, I said, “Mr. Jenkins, thanks so much for the experience. Do you think I could come by and try another one some time?”
“Sure thing,” he said, “but we’re headed up to Canada tonight, and it’ll be a little while before we’re back.”
Canada?
“Ontario. They love rockbilly up there. Got a whole circuit; good bread to be made. You oughta come on up and see for yourself.”
I thought this was a great idea, but J.D. and Nell had already told me in no uncertain terms that I had to finish high school before they’d cut me loose to play music. After that I sat in with the Rock Housers whenever they’d let me, although I was happy just to be there, observe, and be amazed by the pure power they were putting out.
In September 1957 Governor Orval Faubus tried to stop the integration of Central High in Little Rock. This caused a big scene, as President Dwight Eisenhower sent in federal troops and Faubus was branded an arch-segregationist. We knew it wasn’t true. He’d been a progressive governor, but it would have destroyed his career in Arkansas politics if he’d been branded pro-integration. The way it happened, the Arkansas schools integrated pretty quietly after my senior year in high school, and Governor Faubus won four more terms, which was just fine with us. Orval dragged Arkansas into the twentieth century by the scruff of its rough red neck.
One night that fall I was in a bottle club in Forrest City, Arkansas, with a half-pint of Ancient Age bourbon in my back pocket. Guitarist Jimmy Ray Paulman’s brother George was playing bass with a bunch of ol’ boys from West Memphis. I don’t remember how it happened—I think the drummer was either drunk or didn’t show up—and I volunteered to play the drums. It didn’t matter that I was a guitar player. I hit that Bo Diddley beat and watched it just jungle-up that dance. We had a lot of fun that night, and I thought that maybe I ought to start playing drums.
Meanwhile, Conway Twitty was about to lose Jimmy Ray Paulman to a young rocker from Fayetteville in northwest Arkansas: Ronnie Hawkins.
The Hawk was born in 1935. His dad was a barber and his mother taught school, and by the time he was twenty-two Ronnie had already enjoyed a checkered career. As a teenager he had run bootleg whiskey from Missouri to the dry counties of Oklahoma in a souped-up Model A Ford. Sometimes he’d make three hundred dollars a day. By the time he was eighteen he’d invested some of his profits in part-ownerships of various bars and clubs in Fayetteville. There he attended the University of Arkansas, which generated turn-away crowds every weekend.
Ronnie never learned to play an instrument, but soon he was entertaining in his clubs by opening for the bands that came through, like Sonny Burgess’s band or Harold Jenkins’s Rock Housers. The Hawk was famous for his camel walk, a funny dance step he’d learned from a black musician named Half Pint, who shined shoes in his dad’s barbershop. It was like Chuck Berry’s duck walk; you looked like you were standing still, but you were moving. Older people who had seen vaudeville shows knew it as the camel walk. Soon Ronnie was forming his own bands, usually known as the Hawks. While in the army, he had an all-black backup band called the Blackhawks. Things being the way they were in the South then, Ronnie soon discovered that an integrated band was more trouble than it was worth.
When he got out of the service, the rock and roll craze was exploding. Chuck Berry was the king of R&B, and Bill Doggett’s 1956 hit “Honky Tonk” was just the kind of music that interested the Hawk. Ronnie packed a pair of jeans and his record-hop suit into his army duffel, checked his spit-curl hairdo in the mirror, and lit out for Memphis to become a rock and roll star.
I was still in high school at this point. I had the Jungle Bush Beaters with Thurlow to keep me busy on weekends when we weren’t farming. I also played drums with the twenty-five-piece Marvell High Band (until summarily relieved of duty for continually playing in double time). I also helped stage a senior-class musical that people enjoyed so much we took it around to other high schools, split the money with ’em, and put our share in the senior class trip fund. I was dreaming of being a rock and roll star too, making it my business to check out every good band that came our way, like Roy Orbison’s Teen Kings from Texas, who played the Malco Theater on Cherry Street in Helena one night to promote Roy’s first big hit, “Ooby Dooby.” I loved that band because it was a country-R&R hybrid: electric mandolin, drums, doghouse bass, Roy playing electric guitar and another Martin flatpicker. They made a country sound, with a lot of good bottom to it. I saw that band and wanted to be up there with it.
In 1957 some musicians in Memphis offered Ronnie a hundred dollars a week to front their band. The guitar player was Jimmy Ray “Luke” Paulman, who had met Ronnie when Conway’s band played up in Fayetteville, and Luke had sat in with
the Hawk’s band. Ronnie told everyone in Fayetteville that he was leaving to be a rock and roll star, and next time they saw him it would be on prime-time TV. When he arrived in Memphis the group had already broken up over who would run the band for ten dollars extra per night! Ronnie Hawkins found himself stuck; his pride dictated he couldn’t return to Fayetteville until he had a band that could outdraw every other group around.
So Luke invited the Hawk down to Phillips County to try something else. Hawk and his friend Donny Stone came down to West Helena with Luke and moved into Charlie Halbert’s Rainbow Inn Motel. Charlie owned the local ferry and was one of our most important music promoters. He loved musicians and enjoyed helping them out, including Elvis, Conway, and me.
Anyway, Ronnie Hawkins began to put together a band with Luke on guitar, George Paulman on bass, and their cousin Willard “Pop” Jones from Marianna on kamikaze rockabilly piano. Charlie called a friend at KFFA, who let Ronnie and the boys rehearse in the station’s basement, where Sonny Boy Williamson kept his amps and gear.
Now they needed a drummer, but all the drummers around our area were already working. George Paulman told them about a seventeen-year-old high-school kid from Marvell who’d sat in with him and a bunch up in Forrest City. That evening I was just coming in from doing some chores when I noticed a Model A Ford moving fast up our road, leaving a tornado of yellow dust in its wake. The car backfired once or twice as it pulled into our yard. Out stepped Luke and a big ol’ boy in tight pants, sharp shoes, and a pompadour hanging down his forehead.
“I like that hairdo,” I told him.
“Why, thanks, son,” the Hawk rasped in his nasal Ozark twang. “I call it the Big Dick Look.”
I took the boys up into the house to meet the family. Hawk got right to the point. “Lavon, we’re startin’ a band, and there aren’t any drummers around. They tell me you’re a good guitar player and you play a little drums too. Do you wanna join the band?”
I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. “Yes sir!” I said. “I am ready. Let’s go. Just say when. Where do we start?”
Then reality hit me. “Do you know where we can get a set of drums?” I asked the two musicians.
At the kitchen table, my dad cleared his throat. Momma didn’t look too thrilled. The Hawk sought to reassure them. “Mr. Helm, sir, we got it all planned out. We can play clubs around here and then go up to Canada. Conway—uh, Harold Jenkins—knows a guy up there that can keep us working half the year. Luke here goes up there with Conway all the time, ain’t that right, Luke?”
Jimmy Ray nodded. He was kind of quiet.
“Mr. Helm,” the Hawk continued, “Conway’s making good bread in Canada. Real good bread, and he says there ain’t no reason not to go. He says they’re starving for a good band up there.”
Diamond hemmed and hawed a little. “Canadia,” he said. That’s what he called it. “You ever been up to Canadia, Mr. Hawkins? It’s cold all the time. They’ve got ten months of winter up there, and two months of bad sledding. Canadia—I don’t know …”
The three of us and my brother, Wheeler, worked on my folks for a couple of hours. I think we had my daddy convinced at one point, but Momma wore us all down in the end. We reached an agreement that while I was still in school I could play with the band locally on weekends. Then when I graduated in May, they’d give me their blessing, and I was free to go up to Canada.
Well, we got some drums—I think I borrowed a set from Bubba Stewart in Marvell—and rehearsed for months until I got out of high school. We booked our first gig on a Friday night at the Rebel Club in Osceola. “It’s a rough place, son,” the older and wiser Hawk advised me on the way over. “In fact, you have to puke twice and show your razor just to get in.” I must have gulped. The Hawk spat out the car window and reminded me that if anyone asked, I was twenty-one, not seventeen. “Better grow some whiskers if you wanna go to Canada,” he’d say. “I don’t know how the hell I’m gonna get you into those clubs up there if you keep looking like a damn choirboy.”
That first gig was great. Ronnie Hawkins could really work a crowd on a Friday night. I mean, he had ’em where he wanted ’em. He was big, good-looking, funny, and had a good voice. He was an entertainer rather than a musician. He had an instinct for crowd psychology and could start a rumble across the room if he wanted to just by flicking his wrist. It was this power he had over people. We’d hit that Bo Diddley beat, Hawk would come to the front of the stage and do his kick, that camel walk, and the thing would just take off. Ronnie had been a professional diver as a teenager, so he could execute a front flip into a split that would astonish you. Then he’d dance over and pretend to wind up Will Pop Jones, a big, strong kid who hit those piano keys so hard they’d break. God, that rhythm was awesome! I didn’t really know what I was doing on the drums, so I just kept time. People danced, so I figured everything was on target. After the show Ronnie gave me fifteen bucks, and I was in heaven.
“Stick with me, son,” he advised, “’cause this is just hamburger money. Soon we’ll be fartin’ through silk!”
Things continued like this during my senior year. I went to school during the week and ran off with Ronnie for the weekends. Toward spring, when our house was surrounded by high water and we had to come out by boat, Hawk would drive over Thursday night if it looked rainy. I’d pack some clothes and a suit and stay at Charlie Halbert’s so I wouldn’t miss the show. Sometimes we opened for established musicians like Narvel Felts or Carl Perkins, who was the king of our circuit. Carl had a left-handed, right-footed drummer, W. S. Holland, who I watched and learned from whenever I got the chance.
Our band got better every time we played, and soon I got up the nerve to do a couple of songs myself. Ronnie’d hold the mike up to my mouth while I kept time and shouted out the words to “Short Fat Fannie” or “Caledonia.” I’d been teaching myself to drum by playing along to old Sonny Boy Williamson records and soon realized my primitive gear was holding me back. The old snare I was using had calfskin on it and was a bit ragged; after each set I put it in the oven to tighten it up again. What I needed were new drums.
We also needed to join the musicians union, Charlie Halbert told us, if we wanted to play the Delta Supper Club, the Silver Moon, or Pop Warner’s club up in the Missouri bootheel. So one day in early 1958 Charlie, Hawk, and I drove up to Memphis in Charlie’s Lincoln. I was at the wheel, as usual. We pulled up to the union hall, Memphis Local 71, and I got out. Ronnie stayed in the car.
“Ain’t you coming?” I asked him.
“Naw,” Hawk said. “I can’t play anything. What do I want to join the union for?”
I didn’t argue with him. I went in, signed up (Charlie loaned me the first year’s dues), and for the next six years all the Hawk’s professional gigs were booked under my name.
Charlie Halbert, bless him, then took us over to the Hauch Music Company and put a down payment on a brand-new set of red-sparkle Gretsch drums for me. We may have also ordered our red lamé band suits on this trip. Charlie was our guardian angel. As we sped out of Memphis that evening, he fell asleep in the seat beside me. To reward his kindness, I pretended to stall out his Lincoln on the train tracks at a crossing in West Memphis and woke Charlie just as a freight rounded the bend, heading straight for us.
Meanwhile, my academic career was winding down fast. Fireball and I disgraced ourselves on the senior class trip to Washington in the spring of 1958. First we all went up to Memphis and boarded our own train car, which we rode all night to DC. We got into a nasty poker game with some Oklahoma kids, harassed any poor soul that tried to get some sleep, teased the homesick little farm girls until they cried, then snuck off and got lost in Washington and raised some more hell on the way home—enough so that ours was the last senior class to make that trip. There are still people in Marvell who blame me and Fireball for ending that tradition.
Yet when we finally graduated, I had somehow fooled enough of my classmates to be voted Most Talented, Friendliest, B
est Dancer, and Wittiest in our class. At our senior prom, the song we played over and over would soon be the No. 1 record in the country: Conway Twitty’s “It’s Only Make Believe.” Harold Jenkins had been biding his time for years, and it finally paid off for him.
We left for Canada when school let out in May. My dad was all for it—he was impressed by the good money we were making on the weekends—and Momma gave me her blessing as well. I was a fairly independent kid, and I was lucky she let me just be that way. I remember watching her waving good-bye in the rearview mirror as I drove the Hawk’s car down our country road, away from the life I’d known in Turkey Scratch, toward a whole new world a thousand miles north.
There were only four of us going to Canada: Hawk, me, Luke, and Will Pop Jones. Hawk thought that George Paulman was too “rural” to be in the band, meaning that George would just as soon fight the customers as play for ’em. We hadn’t hired his replacement yet, so we drove away as the Ron Hawkins Quartet in a ’55 Chevy sedan that the Hawk borrowed from his sister Winifred for the trip north.
The Hawk always let me drive, but he was funny about his cars. Ronnie wanted those Cadillacs driven a certain way and parked right, with the brake locked so the weight of the car was off the transmission. I’d been driving a tractor for nine years, so it was the most natural thing in the world for me to pull in with the tractor, stop, lock the brake, drop the plow to the ground, kill the engine, and gas it up before any condensation had a chance to form in the tank. Those simple tractor-driving rules suited the Hawk just right. He didn’t even like the other boys to drive. “Dammit, son!” he’d swear at Luke. “You gotta lock that brake, give the tranny a little rest!”
